Landscaping in Mount Baker, Seattle

By pushing the walls away from the house and keeping each one low. A single six or eight foot wall built close to the building is the cheapest way to create a level terrace and the fastest way to put a face across the exact sightline the property was bought for. Stepping the same fall in two or three shorter walls set progressively further down the slope keeps the eye travelling out over the tops of them. It usually costs less as well, because each wall stays under the height thresholds that trigger engineering and permits. The trade-off is that it uses more of the garden's depth, which on a shallow lot is a real constraint.

A number of the steeper parcels on this hillside are, and it changes the retaining wall question completely. The normal Seattle exemption covers walls four feet or lower measured from the bottom of the footing, provided the property is not in an ECA and no adjoining property is damaged. Inside an ECA that exemption does not apply at all, so a wall of any height can require a permit and the design may need engineering input. Seattle defines a steep slope as 40% or more grade over ten feet of vertical change, with fifteen-foot buffers top and toe. We check your parcel against the city map before pricing anything.

Downhill, onto whatever is at the bottom — which is either your own house, your neighbour's garden, or the street. That makes drainage design here as much about controlling discharge as about collecting water. Every terrace, patio and wall we build on this hillside adds impermeable surface and changes where runoff concentrates, so the drainage is designed alongside the levels rather than after them. The advantage of a slope is that discharge to daylight is usually achievable, which is far more reliable than any of the options on a flat lot. The risk is that an uncontrolled discharge becomes someone else's problem and, eventually, your liability.

Yes, and on a lot this steep it is nearly always the better answer. Stairs bolted onto the side of a terrace run eat the width of each level and make the whole arrangement read as a series of separate platforms. Steps built into the wall faces themselves keep each terrace whole and let the run of walls read as one continuous piece of ground. It costs a little more in setting out and in the masonry, and it is the difference between a garden that feels designed and one that feels engineered. Consistent riser heights and a textured tread matter here more than most places, because these steps get used every day in the rain.