You can adjust the distance between the axis text and the graph using the elements theme. When geom_tilethe standard ggplot, you can adjust heightand widthfragments. ggcorrplotdoes not seem to be consistent with this setting. Maybe I do not know about it; I have not used the package before. My hacking solution is to simply overlay a white grid to create space between the plates:
ggcorrplot(corr, sig.level=0.05, lab_size = 4.5, p.mat = NULL,
insig = c("pch", "blank"), pch = 1, pch.col = "black", pch.cex =1,
tl.cex = 14) +
theme(axis.text.x = element_text(margin=margin(-2,0,0,0)),
axis.text.y = element_text(margin=margin(0,-2,0,0))) +
geom_vline(xintercept=1:ncol(mtcars)-0.5, colour="white", size=2) +
geom_hline(yintercept=1:ncol(mtcars)-0.5, colour="white", size=2)

This type of plot is also not as difficult to do as regular ggplot, and then you get full control over the elements of the chart:
library(reshape2)
ggplot(melt(corr), aes(Var1, Var2, fill=value)) +
geom_tile(height=0.8, width=0.8) +
scale_fill_gradient2(low="blue", mid="white", high="red") +
theme_minimal() +
coord_equal() +
labs(x="",y="",fill="Corr") +
theme(axis.text.x=element_text(size=13, angle=45, vjust=1, hjust=1,
margin=margin(-3,0,0,0)),
axis.text.y=element_text(size=13, margin=margin(0,-3,0,0)),
panel.grid.major=element_blank())

ggcorrplot , , geom_tile, height width:
ggcorrplot(corr, sig.level=0.05, lab_size = 4.5, p.mat = NULL,
insig = c("pch", "blank"), pch = 1, pch.col = "black", pch.cex =1,
tl.cex = 14) +
theme(axis.text.x = element_text(margin=margin(-2,0,0,0)),
axis.text.y = element_text(margin=margin(0,-2,0,0)),
panel.grid.minor = element_line(size=10)) +
geom_tile(fill="white") +
geom_tile(height=0.8, width=0.8)
