So i live in Europe, in a city with quite strict planning regulations with regards to gardens. Last year I decided to renovate and even though I did mail the city planning office asking about permits, the officer responded in a confusing way (in native language), which I interpreted incorrectly. In addition, she didn’t tell me that I would need planning permission in my neighbourhood for any buildings we erected. We wanted to put in a shed and covered patio. Fast forward and we started work thinking we were ok. Then my neighbor complained. You’d think maybe she complained we built a shed too big or too close to our property, but no she said we had too much patio. We found this utterly bizarre.
So building enforcement got involved and were quite harsh. Even though we had emails showing that we had tried to make sure we were following the rules, they demanded that the planning department agreed to this in full and would not let up. Planning department then decided we had to apply for full planning permission for the project because we had decided to put a 2x2m shed in and a 3x2 m covered area. They actually agreed that our paving was OK but these other elements made it impossible to approve. As you might imagine, planning pe permission took absolutely ages to get, but we did in the end with some conditions attached. Like we had to plant a tree. And we also had to pull up part of our driveway to make our whole property greener. Whatever, we were just happy to proceed.
Then in January, after a horrible wet winter in which we barely got anything done, the enforcement officer sent us a deadline of May 1. We questioned this as the planning permission did not have any deadline and the normal deadline is two years. She said I can do what I want an enforcement officer (not joking). We have to send photos to prove we have complied. so we have been in a panic as this is quite a big job and it’s taking ages to get everything sorted. We are not gardening people, and it takes a long time in this country to get things booked in. Everyone is so busy.
We managed to find a gardener to redo the borders around our patio, and decided to put gravel down in between all of the plants.
I have now discovered this may need planning permission too and nonit is not on our planning docs. I feel absolutely nauseous. I could have sworn on a stack of bibles that because gravel is porous and water permeable, the rules said that this was okay to put down. Also, we are not using it to like create another patio or make paths. We’re just using it as mulch between plants to keep weeds down. This part of the project is essentially done and looks great but now I am completely paranoid that they will not like it and say that we put down more hard material.
The only reason I thought it might be a problem is because my Husband brought it up. I should add: He was extremely angry with me about the messed up planning permission and we had some enormous arguments about it. So now I feel like I fucked up again and have put the whole project at risk by not fully checking whether or not gravel was allowed.
I don’t know what to do. I guess I’m just moaning here at my own stupidity.
My idea at the moment is to try and cover as much of the gravel with plants as possible, which is really the idea in the first place but it’s just gonna take while to get all that covered. We have lots of plants in the gravel, but it just looks worse at the moment and more gravel than plant.
Any gardeners out there have any suggestions for a quick ground cover.? Please don’t tell me I’m an idiot I already feel totally stupid. I’m not really like this. I normally I’m very good at managing projects and do them well. I feel like I have some sort of curse hanging over me with this garden.
I thought once we got permission we could just go but the enforcement officer keeps sending us horrible letters. I feel sick and haven’t been sleeping.