Karin, I think the OP found offense with my post, not yours. I hesitated to make that reply since it held no value to him. I'm really speaking to those who might read this thread and avoid the mistakes in their future projects. If I was harsh, it was to make the point that the entire property should be considered before home construction begins. Actually, I liked the video slide show presentation. I let it run through the first time and I quickly saw a thumbnail of the material covered. The second time through I hit the pause button on each photo to get a more in-depth picture of the situation. Most of you don't live in a climate like North Carolina or Arkansas where I live. So you may not understand the significance of what was said. "Construction in our area does not include basements due to the water table being high." The same is generally true for Arkansas. Ground that is bone dry during part of the year can have a substantial underground spring in wet periods. And in warm climates wet basements or crawl spaces can result in dry rot or termites. There is not a single competent homebuilder in my area that will build a hole in the ground basement. The exception to this is a walk out basement on a lot where protective drainage can surround the home and be discharged to an area lower than the house foundation. This usually requires a down sloping lot of 8 to 12%. In the upper south, a walk out basement cuts the energy costs for heating and cooling on a per foot basis. Per foot construction costs of the home are also often reduced. For this reason, down sloping lots typically sell for about 10 to 20% more than flat or up sloping lots. What I saw here seemed to be a miss-match of house to lot. On placing the garage / driveway on the high side of the lot ... Here in Arkansas, and I suspect in North Carolina, the top 18 inches of soil never develops the level of compaction of deeper soil that has not been disturbed for millions of years. Thus below 18", you will usually find soil to have a greater load bearing capacity more suitable to garage slabs. Put the garage on the high side with a cut to hard soil, and the step-up to house finished floor gives the needed height above ground for the crawl space on the lower side of the lot. Do the reverse and you must either do an expensive compacted fill for the garage slab or make a substantial excavation to create a crawl space, one that is well below natural grade (not good). So for the house presented, there is the neighbor's water flowing to the foundation where the crawl space is at a much lower grade than the outside grade. Drive through subdivisions here and for lots with more than a 1 foot side slope, it will be the rare exception to see a garage on the low side of the lot. It is much cheaper to anticipate and prevent drainage problems than it is to fix drainage post construction. And it's much cheaper to build walls to avoid the slopes that homeowners grow to hate if done before or with foundation construction. It's a big mistake to begin construction without a detailed grading and drainage plan done by someone that knows what he/she is doing.

I emailed the County Engineer this morning from my work e-mail and within 15 minutes he called me back, eager to meet with me on the site. (My email signature includes my title and specialty). Sooo-when he got there he was pretty upset at the work that had occurred, and he agreed that I was right to be upset. He called over the County Inspector and together we came up with a solution-they're going to add a concrete apron ramp to our driveway that will extend 6 feet into our driveway AND they're going to upgrade the drain in our driveway as well as relocate it so it helps keep our property from flooding. They will put topsoil in the ROW out 3 feet into my yard, I agreed to plant it, they said I could put whatever plants I want-I plan to use lavender and a low groundcover. They asked me when I wanted the driveway done and I said 'yesterday'-but that can't happen, of course. What they WILL do for right now is add a gravel base slope so we can actually drive in to the driveway and they'll add a ramp to the street side to avoid a jarring bump. That should occur tomorrow. The driveway improvement is awesome-it means a lot less work WE will have to do when we replace our driveway. They're going to fix a few other drainage issues too. We got to talking shop, they know what it is I do and were impressed that I knew what I was talking about when discussing grade, drainage, plans, etc. Then they thanked me for being so gracious about the horrible job the contractor is doing. We commiserated a bit on that, too. So over all I'm happier-I'm getting more done than I thought we would get. So, while I'm not holding my breath, I think it may be ok in the long run (I hope!) DH is going to oversee the work like a hawk, and these guys KNOW that I do inspections and permitting and know my stuff, so I suspect they're going to be cool with us.

When trimming, keep in mind that this is a matched set of “bookends,” so they should be exact, mirror image duplicates of each other as much as possible. I would think of the trimming project as a challenge … as if you were involved in a manufacturing process making a machine project on a lathe or something along those lines. It would not be at all detrimental to use a tape measure to double check dimensions for matching throughout the process. I would rough out the shapes of both before fine tuning either. The place to begin is standing back well away from them trying to envision what they are to become. If the shrub needs to be moved a little left, right or forward, this is the time to notice it and account for the adjustments you’ll need to make in the cutting. It really barely matters where the plant roots are located. If you the shrub to be 4” to the right, “move” it there with the cutting process. It’s important to envision the finished product before cutting because there is a substantial part of them that won’t get any cutting at all. If you just charged up on them and started hacking away, there’s a good chance you’d cut some wrong parts off. Since the pair of shrubs are matched, the first cuts to make should determine the height. (To match the pair, follow a line on the siding of the house as a guide. Don’t measure from the ground.) Keep in mind that you do NOT want to cut at the place where you envision the limits of the finished product to be (the red line in picture.) There are three reasons for this. As soon as you finish cutting the plant it’s going to grow and if you cut it at the finished height, in a short time it will grow too large. The second reason is because, even though you tried hard to make it a perfect shape, it’s not going to end up as perfect as you’d hoped for. Later, when you need to trim and try to perfect it again, you will want to be cutting only in the newer, softer, easier-to-cut foliage, rather than in the hard, sticky, woody portion. If you don’t cut a little smaller in the first place, you’ll probably end up where the next cutting has to dip somewhere into the woody portion of the plant again. This is a royal pain. If you make the plant a little smaller to begin with, it gives you a “cushion” against having this happen. In general, I find that people have a strong resistance to cutting the plant smaller (the blue line in the picture.) But do yourself a favor and get over this. If you mistakenly cut this plant to a stub, in two years you’d barely remember your error because it would be pretty large again. In cutting it just 6” less than you want it to be, in two months you’ll barely remember or notice that you did that. The third reason you want to cut the plant a little smaller than the “finished product size” is because the more foliage you remove from the top portion of the plant, the greater it is that you expose the bottom portion (the part that is undercut and desperately needs to grow) to more light and an improved chance of quicker growth. Between the yellow line (which represents the ground plane) in the picture and the shrub, there is nothing at all to cut … until you get higher up to the blue line. At this cavity at the lower portion of the shrubs, all the foliage will be left untouched so it can continue to grow as quickly as possible. The goal is to keep the upper portions of the shrub trimmed so that it shades the lower portions the least as possible. Even if you want the shrubs to be larger than what I'm showing, for now you should trim them as I'm showing because you're in a corrective phase trying to regain the lost lower foliage. In your second-to-last picture, it shows how a subordinate, adjacent shrub has encroached on the Yew, which is clearly the more important shrub. The lesser shrub should be trimmed such that this doesn't happen.

I don't know why some commenters are talking about a new pathway - a sidewalk - to the street. The OP never asked for that. Also, never asked about additional parking. Simply, if you measure a parking space at your local grocery store, it probably ranges from 9' wide down to 8' wide. If you're lucky and it's 10' wide with the double lines then you feel much more safe from dings in your door, and can step fully out of your vehicle, right? Now, a typical residential driveway width is 16'-18'. So think if you drive up the left side and park outside and leave room for the 2nd car on the right. If you were playing the "lava" game and not trying to walk on the grass, you'd have to shimmy out just like in a skinny grocery store parking space. Adding a border will help with that, as well as looking better to many people, and will not accentuate the garage as being more "in your face." I would argue it actually brings the scale down if you choose colors/materials that accentuate a design element of your house, regardless of how wide the width of the driveway actually winds up as including the border. Here are some examples of a border: