I wonder if it's possible to keep the left side of the driveway (when facing the house) more curved instead of making it a straight line. If you look at the last photo, echo the curve on the right, and add the flare at the road. A straight line would draw your eye directly to the garage door, but if you could keep a curve there, it might help make the garage less prominent. Lay it out with flour or lime on the ground and drive it to see if it's conveniently sized and shaped.

A turnaround/parking area on the right where you have drawn it in is fine, but I don't think I'd put a Japanese Maple in a smallish cutout in pavement. Setting it back a bit or better yet, over by the spruce would prevent the soil around it from getting compacted and prevent winter damage from snow removal.

The curvi-linear driveway works great - avoid a bleak rectangle look at all costs.

The turn out and extra guest parking should suit you well.

Consider grass/tree friendly paving blocks and add in some brick/stone work around the driveway edges and as accent lines across it.

You say that the plan isn't to scale - just make sure it is actually big enough for turning around if that's what you want to use it for! For reference, a typical parking spot is a minimum of 8'x18' - a more generous size is 10'x20'. And for perpendicular parking, a 24' aisle is the general rule for backing out (which would translate to the width of the driveway). I'm sure people make things narrower in residential turnarounds, however.

Oh, and I would think that Japanese Maple would get backed-into in its current location, as well as not having happy roots. (Do Japanese maples have the same issues as the large maples as far as huge roots that tend to heave driveways?)

Btw, I do like the dark gray flagstone with the red brick border - it picks up the lighter gray above and grounds it nicely.

I like that grey square-cut flagstone too, but even concrete would be good as it would tone down the fairly hyper pattern in the house brick. If you get a neutral stone, you might consider painting the shutters to match it; the current red doesn't seem the right shade for the house brick.

KarinL

Thanks everyone for your help. I am going to look into pavers that are grass/tree friendly for the parking area as suggested. I am trying to work around the Japanese maple since it is already there. It is not the best specimen but keeping it would be nice.

I measured the parking area and have 36' for pulling in and backing out. The rest of the driveway will be approx. 15' wide.

Still can decide on material for the walkway and the front porch, any more thoughts would really be great.

Thanks,
Ally

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