Landscaping in Ballard, Seattle

Often, yes — and it is one of the few genuinely useful generalisations about ground conditions in this city. Much of Ballard and neighbouring Crown Hill sits on sandier glacial outwash rather than the dense till that underlies most of Seattle, and lots there frequently drain well enough that a full drainage system is unnecessary. The caveat is that it is not universal and it does not respect street boundaries — pockets of till turn up mid-block. We test rather than assume, because the difference is thousands of dollars either way. Where the ground does drain, that money usually goes further into the visible parts of the project instead.

A surprising amount, as long as you give up on fitting a conventional lawn into it. At that size a lawn is shaded by the house and the neighbours for most of the day, stays damp, and wears through to bare soil wherever people walk. The layouts that work here pave the majority of the space to a size that genuinely fits a table and chairs, use raised planters to get planting depth without losing floor area, treat a fence or wall as a planted vertical surface, and light it properly — because a small garden overlooked by windows is seen from inside far more than it is stood in.

With planning rather than improvisation, and it does affect the schedule. Most of the older Ballard streets have no driveway, narrow side returns and restricted parking, which means material deliveries have to be timed, staged and often moved by hand from the kerb the same day they arrive rather than left on a pallet. We arrange the necessary permissions where a street occupation is needed, size deliveries to what can be cleared in a day, and sequence the work so the front of the house is not obstructed longer than it has to be. It is a real cost and it is in the estimate.

Frequently, and for a specific reason: the smaller and more shaded a lawn is, the worse real grass performs and the higher the maintenance per square foot. A 400-square-foot lawn behind a Ballard bungalow, shaded by the house on one side and a neighbour's cedars on the other, has usually been reseeded twice already. Turf here needs a proper drainage base like anywhere else — even on outwash soil, an unprepared base holds water under the backing — but it stays green in February, takes a dog, and removes the mowing problem on a lot with nowhere to store a mower.