Landscaping in Madison Park, Seattle

Broadmoor operates an architectural review process covering exterior changes, and hardscape, walls and significant planting alterations generally need sign-off before work begins. It is a straightforward process but it is not immediate, so it belongs at the front of the project rather than being discovered once materials are ordered. In practice that means we produce the drawings and material specifications early enough to go through review, and we schedule the build around approval rather than against it. Outside the Broadmoor gates the rest of Madison Park has no association at all and only the city's rules apply.

By treating them as fixed points in the design, because on these lots they are usually the most valuable thing in the garden and the hardest to replace. Established maples, beeches and conifers here have root plates extending well beyond the canopy, and cutting a patio base through a major root zone can kill a tree slowly enough that nobody connects the two events three years later. Where a tree matters we shift the layout, use a shallower build-up, or float the surface over the roots rather than excavating through them. Where a tree is already failing, removing it before the hardscape goes in is far cheaper than removing it afterwards.

Yes, and it is worth knowing which side of that line a property sits on. The valley is low ground taking water off the higher land on both sides, and it has a well-known history of drainage pressure during heavy rainfall. Gardens down there frequently need the drainage question answered before anything else is designed, and a hard surface added without accounting for the extra runoff it creates can make a neighbour's problem worse as well as your own. Up on the higher ground toward Washington Park, conditions are considerably kinder and drainage is often a routine part of the build rather than the point of it.

More so than in a small one, and this is the neighbourhood where it makes the biggest difference. A large, heavily planted garden is a black void from every window between October and March — precisely the months you are indoors looking at it. A handful of well-placed uplights on specimen trees, grazing light across a stone wall and lit steps turns that into the best view in the house for a third of the year. The other half of the argument is safety: on gardens this size the paths, level changes and steps are genuinely hazardous unlit on a wet evening, and lighting them is inexpensive.