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Irrigation · Ballard
A Ballard garden rarely needs a conventional sprinkler system, and saying so honestly is most of the conversation. On a lot with under eight hundred square feet of garden, largely paved or planted rather than lawned, a full multi-zone install is over-specified — what these gardens actually need is drip to the beds and containers, on a timer, sized for the space. The Ballard-specific factor working in your favour is the ground: much of this neighbourhood sits on sandier outwash that drains freely, which is excellent for winter but means summer moisture is held less well than on the city's till.
Paver apron and planted strip across the front of a house on an older residential street
What we get called about
Ballard is small lots and good drainage, which is close to the opposite of the rest of Seattle. The typical job here is not holding a slope or fixing a bog — it is making a compact rectangle behind a hundred-year-old house genuinely usable. That means more paved surface than people expect, a turf or lawn area smaller than instinct suggests, and enough planting depth at the boundary to make the space feel enclosed rather than merely small. The one real constraint is access: the older streets have narrow side returns and no off-street parking, so material handling shapes the schedule.
Worth knowing in Ballard
Put the containers on their own line. Pots and raised planters on free-draining Ballard soil dry out several times faster than anything at ground level, and it is the single most useful thing a small-garden system can do.
The method
The sequence does not change between neighbourhoods — what changes is the ground it is applied to. Full detail on the irrigation service page.
Everything downstream depends on this. A design drawn without knowing what the supply actually delivers produces zones that cannot run properly, and it is the most common fault in existing systems.
Lawn, beds, containers and any shaded area separated, because they want different volumes and different frequencies. This is where most retrofits earn their money.
Sprinkler spacing calculated for head-to-head coverage; drip laid to the planting rather than in a grid that ignores where the roots are.
Lines trenched to depth and sleeved under any hard surface. Where a patio or drive is being built at the same time, the sleeves go in then — it costs almost nothing and saves a great deal later.
Zones timed, seasonal schedule set, and you shown how to adjust it. A system nobody knows how to change gets left on the install setting for a decade.
What it costs in Ballard
A Ballard system is usually well under the $3,000 to $9,000 band that a suburban install occupies, because what is needed is drip to beds and containers with a timer rather than multiple lawn zones. Where a small lawn or turf area exists it adds a zone. Being honest about scale is the main way we save clients money on this service.
You pay after the project is fully completed.
The estimate you sign is the price you pay.
Spread the cost with no interest.
Covers hardscape work; vegetation excluded.
Local questions
General questions about this service are on the service page. These are the ones that only come up here.
Almost certainly not, and we would rather say so. A multi-zone sprinkler system is designed for lawns and open areas, and a Ballard back garden of seven hundred square feet is usually mostly paved and planted with little or no lawn. What genuinely helps is drip to the beds and containers on a simple timer — considerably cheaper, less disruptive to install, and better suited to what is actually growing. If a contractor quotes a full system for a garden this size, ask what each zone is watering.
Yes, and it cuts both ways. The sandier outwash under much of this neighbourhood drains well in winter, which is why so many Ballard gardens escape the standing-water problem that plagues the rest of the city. The other side is that free-draining soil holds less summer moisture, so planting here can dry out faster in August than the same planting on till a mile away. Improving the soil with organic matter helps retain moisture, and drip to the beds handles the rest — a small intervention for a real difference.
With their own drip line, because they behave nothing like ground-level beds. A raised planter has a limited soil volume, more exposed surface area and free drainage at the base, so it dries out several times faster than the same planting in the ground — and in a Ballard garden, raised planters are frequently the main planted element. Putting them on the same schedule as ground-level beds guarantees one or the other is wrong. A separate low-flow drip line with its own timing is inexpensive and it is what makes them work.
It usually needs less than people assume, and sometimes none. A side return is permanently shaded and frequently damp from a downspout, so the summer drying that affects an open garden barely touches it — the more common problem there is too much water rather than too little. Where something is planted along it, a single drip line run at low volume is sufficient. It is worth checking whether the strip is genuinely dry before adding water to a space that is already the dampest part of the property.
Serving Ballard and surrounding neighbourhoods
Ballard Avenue · Sunset Hill · Loyal Heights · Whittier Heights · West Woodland · Adams · Crown Hill edge
98107 · 98117
Recent work
HardscapingView full sizeSegmental block walls terracing the grade at the front of a modern building, with a stone column, handrails to code and a paved approach — commercial hardscaping, where the walls have to take footfall as well as soil.
Retaining WallsView full sizeA wall run the whole length of a fence line to win back a flat strip of garden. Ballard lots are narrow, so the width this recovers is width the garden genuinely did not have.
WalkwaysView full sizeA side return too narrow for a full path. Large slabs floated in washed rock give a route through and let the ground either side carry on taking water.
Artificial TurfView full sizeArtificial turf pinned into a brick paver border so the edge cannot lift or curl. The grape trellis and the raised planter were part of the same job.
We come out, look at the ground, and put a fixed written price together. No deposit, and it does not change once agreed.
Free estimate
Three minutes on the form. We reply during office hours, Monday – Friday, 9:00 AM – 7:00 PM, and we come out and look at the site before quoting anything.
Or call (425) 533-9734
Thank you — we have your details. We reply during office hours, Monday – Friday, 9:00 AM – 7:00 PM. If it is urgent, call (425) 533-9734.
