Major Landscaping Questions

[josephny]

I've been renovating a house and am feeling stuck on the design of the landscaping.

Specifically, driveway and parking issues.

We have a front porch across the entire front of the house and it wraps 12' around the North side. Past that are the HVAC condensors.

The house sits about 100' back from the road and there is a driveway entrance from the public road about 50' the North of the house and another 75' to the South of the house.

The house's elevation is about 13' higher than the public road.

Initially, my thought was to just use the North driveway entrance, immediately sloping upward to a gravel area for parking and deliveries on the North side of the house.

Then I thought maybe keep both driveway entrances (one in and the other out) for a (very squished) semi-circular driveway in front of a ~7' wall halfway back from the house. Not sure how I like that.

The needs are for parking (5-7 vehicles would be nice), ease of getting from vehicle to house, and the regular UPS/Fed-EX/Etc. deliveries.

Here are some pictures of what I have now.

I have the machinery so I can create walls (I'm sure there's a better work) or a continuous slope or something else.

Anyone have any good ideas?

Thank you!

 

[josephny]

Several more pic

 

[Spike56]

WOW, this is way beyond my pay grade to even suggest a solution. But, my 2 cents is, whatever you do pay serious (very serious) attention to water / erosion issues - especially from the house roof. It appears runoff will have to cross the parking / driveway area ?

 

[deezler]

Cool project. Good supply of pics, but do you have an overhead/aerial view with sufficient detail? Very hard to get proper depth perspective from the ground level shots.

I would definitely keep a circular / pull-through driveway. The delivery guys will sure appreciate it, but you and your family/guests will also. Backing up to turn around in tight zones or unlevel terrain sucks compared to just get in and go.

 

[jaxs]

Aren't you a little far along to be asking for ideas?

 

[Midniteoyl]

Just a FYI, and I dont know about FedEX, but UPS around here has to 'back in' at every stop. It's suppose to be so they don't back out into traffic, but even on roundabout drives they need to back up a certain number of feet or get in trouble.

 

[MoKelly]

We had a landscape architect design the back. He did a fantastic job.

It was free if we used his firm to do the work or $150 if we did it ourselves.

His design and drawings were well worth $150.

Good luck.

MoKelly

 

[Have tractor did travel]

Well, you certainly have the equipment.
The house, 100 feet from the road and with that elevation, gives the opportunity for a nice landscaped front yard, with a good view from sitting on the front porch. No-one likes to look at a driveway, or cars, so I would not do a circular drive. I'd bring the auto entrance in from the existing drive that will be closest to the kitchen. Bring the cars up to the house, provide parking, and then put a sidewalk leading to the entrance closest to the kitchen, and a sidewalk leading to the front door.

 

[josephny]

Thank you to everyone so much!

Spike56: Very wise of you indeed. When I bought this house it had 4' of water in the basement for probably years. Rebuilt it all. There's a very wet mountain right behind the house. Leveled the area behind the house, dug a ditchswale to catch the mountain runoff and direct around and far from the house down to the road. Also made a 3.5' wide by 10' footer/french drain entirely around the perimeter of the house with drains on both sides of the house down to the road to catch the underground water. Haven't figured out what to do with the to-be-installed gutter water (roof water) but I think the french drain would be able to handle it well.

deezler: I wish I had those diagrams with the curvy lines that explain the elevations. Or even a current overhead pic. All I have is old googlemaps/apple-maps pics, and maybe a topo. I like a circular driveway also, as does the Boss, but the tradeoff of having the vehicles in front of the house and the wall/cliff/terracing and the view of the vehicles outweighs the benefits (for the Boss) of the driveway.

jaxs: Is it really ever too late to do double (or triple work)?

Midniteoyl: That explains a lot. I see this all the time and wonder why. I can't help but think that even with the excellent drivers, the rear cameras and whatever other safety equipment, it's more dangerous to be backing into driveways all day.

MoKelly: I'd gladly spend $150 for a pro to design this. It's just about impossible to find a pro around here.

Have Tractor Will Travel: That's exactly where we are going. I'm a little concerned about having a simple slope from the house to the road.

Move another couple hundred tons of dirt yesterday.

Here's what I've got now.

 

[deezler]

Nice grade!