Thank you the car is generally there in the day as we use motorbikes to commute to work.

It looks bright and sunny though, which way does it face?

Sorry taken so long to reply, it faces south west.

I would paint the fences dark green or black and plant Lavender all the way down each side, It is tough, evergreen and good scent.

And perhaps an Olive tree in a large tub to hide the meter unit?

For plants - you could have some beautiful Japanese Maples, Herbs and Vegetables, Exotic Palms, some complimentary Hedging, Fruit Trees, Exotic Bamboo, Roses, Ornamental Treesor even Bay Trees!

Thank you both nice to have ideas of plants to plant that will last .

Well i think having a skinny bit of soil and a fence behind i would go for grasses. There are so many to choose from nowadays and they will soften the edges and won't scratch the car or you if rubbed up against them.

It is resin bonded stone and is low maintenance and snow doesn't settle on it! X

Some interesting plant advice, which as a plant specialist, I find a little disappointing to read on a site like Houzz where people may look for information from pros -so forgive me if I point out a few things:

Lavender is not evergreen, vegetables, fruit and herbs bordering a drive at exhaust pipe level may not be strictly healthy, also at passing dog pee height, reliably hardy UK climate palms have crowns that span about 3m, Acers and bamboo (except one invasive species - Semiarundinaria fastuosa) also have wide spreading crowns - so these plants may not be great in your narrow borders, grasses are mostly not evergreen and arch/frequently flop over a wide area (imo need their own space), roses except very few thornless species or climbers that are very carefully trained onto the fences could scratch people moving too and from cars. Bay trees clipped to hedging or creative topiary could work.

The RHS classes Lavender as evergreen, the foliage may be grey-green but is there year round and I stand by my plant suggestion as a suitable plant for edging a driveway

https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?pid=127

We use lavender all the time for edging driveways and must have planted out a few 100 already this year - we love it and your quite right it is great for this purpose. The plants spread a good 60 - 80cm making them a lot wider than the beds in this front garden - still could work though if they are prepared to lose a fair bit of drive. As for the evergreen issue the RHS, bless em, do a great job and 'technically' - as they are bound to quote, lavender is evergreen/grey, but do present a sparse winter foliage which can look terrible if there are severe frosts - if you don't want to cut them back that is. After a couple of seasons hard pruning is recommended to stop the plants from getting woody/leggy and whilst there is debate whether before or after winter is the best time to prune, its up to the garden owner if they want to look at bare woody growth at the base/centre of the plant for the sake of a sparse spread of grey leaves through the winter. This doesn't matter so much if the lavender is part of a bigger planting composition, but on its own up against a fence our opinion is that its flowering qualities and limited foliar attributes would not warrant inclusion when other reliable evergreens such as Pittosporums 'Tom Thumb' or 'County Park' would fulfil the low evergreen role much better, leaving flowering effect to non rampant climbers such as Trachelospermum jasminoides, Rosa 'Zephrine Drouhin', and Campsis radicans with shrubs that can be trained onto fences such as Itea ilicifolia and Garrya elliptica, to quote just a few.

hear hear for the Real Garden Company! reading this, i was beginning to feel zoomed back to 1970!

here in the 21st century - we are more aware of the needs of nature and of our effect on it. since your 'garden' is mostly hard surface, please consider planting bee-friendly plants along the edges in the little space left.

in my opinion, you can afford to have some low-growing plants which overlap the edges of your drive, particularly at the front of the plot. i suggest ceanothus repens for flowers and juniperus horizontalis for year-round interest.

Well thanks for the likes and supportive comment Pam!

However - and I hope you won't mind me saying, Juniperus horizontalis = the conifer loving '70's, lol. Also it can cover about 3-4 sq m horizontally - so would be interesting parking around it!
I did think about recommending Ceanothus, although 'Dark Star' is my fave, albeit more shrubby and requiring work to train onto a fence. However we have planted many a C. repens thinking 'oh this would make great ground cover' only to find it covered a huge area frequently making mounds over 1m high, lovely but beware!

When you have beds this narrow around a utilitarian space it really pays to stick to tight, compact growing shrubs that can be clipped into shape for the lower level mound forming plants, then upright hedge type plants for taller fence hiding -or best of all climbers that can be trained onto the fences; more work training but more flower, more bee friendly as you correctly say is so important Pam, and also easy to train onto the wall of the house and around the meters.

hmm. i'll agree to disagree. conifers, apart from the dreaded lawsonia and leylandii] are quite 'now' and the low growing shrubs with a tendency towards world-domination can only be a GOOD thing, in my book! but then, i hate hate hate hard surfaces with no thought other than to service the great god automobile...

a quick re-cap.. for folks with less impermeable driveways, some of the hardier herbs, such as thyme, will grow happily in gravel and don't mind being driven over occasionally. i wouldn't then use them for cooking, though.