Parking on lawns

[Captain Kernow]

I realise that the mere fact that I have started this topic may say more about me, but I'm curious to know how many folk out there share my absolute abhorrence of the phenomenon (not necessarily a recent one) of parking on front lawns.

 

This is not about taking front lawns or other parts of your garden up, to create a hard-standing or garage, but about the practice of parking your car on your front lawn.

 

I realise that it's not everywhere, but I feel that it's on the increase and I wonder what others feel about it.

 

I should add that it's not about illegal parking of third party vehicles on someone else's front lawn, but where those living in a house and/or their guests choose to use their own front lawn as an ('overspill') car park. I realise that as the property owners they have every right to do so, but then again, when one sees this happening, it's reasonable enough to have an opinion about it, even if you (probably rightly) don't share that opinion with the person using their front lawn as a car park.

Edited July 20, 2019 by Captain Kernow
Clarifying meaning.

[Welly]

Wait until their services (sewage, gas, water or electric) needs repairing due to the weight of the cars over them, they will find they are responsible for those.

 

Neighbour opposite parked her car over the sewage manhole cover on the public grass verge, the cover broke and she must have been too embarrased to report the cover to the water company so left a traffic cone over it for months! Eventually I investigated the cone and reported the damage - it was fixed within 48 hours, no questions were asked.

Edited July 20, 2019 by Welly

[The White Rabbit]

I'm not impressed. If you need the space regularly, take the lawn up and replace with something more suitable. If it's an occasional need, find another option. Parking on a lawn (even your own) doesn't seem right somehow. I won't join a pitchfork and flaming torch mob's march over it, but to me it's definitely nekulturny. 

[Red Devil]

Can't say I've ever really seen it, and I'm a landscape contractor, mind you where I live and work the amount of rainfall we get means that your lawn would pretty soon resemble the Somme if you used it regularly for parking on. 

 

Only once in over twenty years have I ever been asked about grass blocks for a grassed hard standing area, and that got changed to something else when done.

[Clive Mortimore]

I am not too sure about someone parking on their own lawn. I quite often look out the back window to see these two in our back garden eating the lawn. 

[Baby Deltic]

Trouble is, lifting turf is an absolute sod of a job.

[tomparryharry]

I've only ever had to take up a verge, to provide vehicle access to my back garden. That was done to industrial standards. 900mm down, tamped in hardcore base followed by the aforementioned grass blocks with fine topsoil, sand & grass seed. If I hadn't done that, the access would have been a battlefield.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

Call me shallow, but when looking about for a new home, we turned down one house because the neighbours had taken down the back wall of the garage and were using their rear garden as a very well filled parking lot. (I had a suspicion it was 'every car we have ever owned', because at the farthest corner were a couple of half-timbered Morris Minatories, and then an early Mini. All gone now, the property sold a good many years past and all were cleared away).

[Claude_Dreyfus]

When we first moved into our current house we had barely any disposable income, two cars, and a drive way big enough for only 1 car...neither would fit in the garage (garage too small!). We had to use part of the lawn to put one of the cars. I wasn't great, and within a couple of weeks that part was just mud. It took over a year before we could afford to do something about it.

 

The irony is, now we have a driveway big enough for 4 cars...but only have the one car to go on it!

[Happy Hippo]

Our chauffeur parks all the cars either in or just outside the old carriage house.

 

Visitor parking is restricted to the courtyard, although we have had occasion to use the orchard for overflow parking when necessary.

 

One would never park on the ornamental lawns.

Edited July 20, 2019 by Happy Hippo

[Oldddudders]

I don't think the Captain is being completely anal. While occasional overspill parking for a social in dry weather may not do too much damage, the certainty is that regularly parking vehicles will rut and damage the sward, especially in damp or wet conditions, thus rendering it less than a lawn. One of my lawns has had occasional visits from very heavy agricultural vehicles,  a Manitou (poor man's JCB) when the roof was being renewed, and even a full-size big tractor towing a large tank so my cleaner's lover could empty my cesspool. The lawn does not recover readily from such at any great rate of knots, and years later is rutted and has more weeds than grass in places. . 

[The Stationmaster]

Strikes me as downright daft to park on a lawn because - as OD has already noted - all you are going to do is damage it.   No question of it here because our drive as it presently stands will easily accommodate three cars (which it does every night) and should I be inclined to shift one of my log piles and my stock of paving slabs and various bricks it could easily accommodate at least one more.  

 

And should I be inclined to provide both a suitable (inclined obviously) ramp into the garage and stable my concrete mixer elsewhere I could even accommodate a car undercover although I was told many years ago that placing cars inside an unheated motor house is not good for them - so they'll stay outside.

[spikey]

49 minutes ago, Baby Deltic said:

Trouble is, lifting turf is an absolute sod of a job.

 

Get some badgers in.  They'll do it for you - and very efficiently too.   A pal of mine had the best part of 30 square meters of newly-laid turf lifted overnight ...

[gwrrob]

55 minutes ago, Baby Deltic said:

Trouble is, lifting turf is an absolute sod of a job.

 

The grass isn't always greener on the other side...…...

[spikey]

21 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

... so my cleaner's lover could empty my cesspool.

 

Love it!  Oh, the visions that conjures up!  Such words should certainly be set to music - a heart-rending lament, perhaps, Victorian music-hall style ...

[Enterprisingwestern]

1 hour ago, Clive Mortimore said:

I am not too sure about someone parking on their own lawn. I quite often look out the back window to see these two in our back garden eating the lawn. 

 

About time you bought a lawnmower Clive you tight sod!

 

Mike.

[eastglosmog]

Would that I had a front lawn on which I could park.  Front garden is 4ft above the road and no way can you drive a car up a 4ft stone retaining wall!

[Oldddudders]

22 minutes ago, spikey said:

 

Love it!  Oh, the visions that conjures up!  Such words should certainly be set to music - a heart-rending lament, perhaps, Victorian music-hall style ...

Trust me, the stunts they get up to, the standoffs over 6 years, my wet shoulder..... Leonard Sachs had nothing on this!

['CHARD]

I confess to sometimes parking the VW Kombi van on the lawn - so it can pretend it's camping or at a festival rather than awaiting the next commute or run to the tip 

[Captain Kernow]

There are a couple of circumstances that I have in mind, with regard to parking on one's lawn. One is where there is a lawn next to the driveway, that can only be accessed by a car by first driving on the driveway and then turning onto the lawn. I've seen that done, in Bath of all places, too.

 

The other circumstance is as it is where we live now, in that most of the front gardens are lawn and there is generally no fence or hedge between the gardens and the road and no pavement either.

 

[Clive Mortimore]

1 hour ago, Enterprisingwestern said:

 

About time you bought a lawnmower Clive you tight sod!

 

Mike.

That is a good idea Mike. Lawn mowers don't have vets bills, need a farrier, hay or mucking out. I will put it to Mrs M and see what she says.

 

"My mate Mike suggest we replace the 'orses with a lawn mower".........I am not that brave.

[Enterprisingwestern]

24 minutes ago, Clive Mortimore said:

That is a good idea Mike. Lawn mowers don't have vets bills, need a farrier, hay or mucking out. I will put it to Mrs M and see what she says.

 

"My mate Mike suggest we replace the 'orses with a lawn mower".........I am not that brave.

 

I'll tell her then, I'm assertive in such situations!

 

Mike.

[friscopete]

When we had more cars around  that people,daughters ,boy friends, me  etc  we put down two strips of PSP steel strip  to park on  the front lawn .When they all dispersed I took them up .I used to move  then round a bit to minimize ot maybe equalise  damage  to the lawn .They were no problem but when I picked them up from a military dealer I had to leave the hatch up  on my XR3 and the  fumes nearly killed me .When I sold them I delivered them like wise i but in my Golf but no fumes.The Germans think of everything .

i also suggest that if thats all you have to worry about your doing well........

[Gordon A]

All depends on the families needs and priorities.

 

Gordon A

[Mallard60022]

What's a lawn CK? Is it a Jordy thing for getting money from a bank or loan shark or similar?
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