Landscaping in Queen Anne, Seattle

By deciding how many levels you want before deciding anything else. On a lot falling fifteen feet, a single level surface means either a very tall retaining wall or a great deal of imported fill, and both are expensive and both eat the garden. Two or three terraces stepping down the fall give you more usable space in total, need shorter and cheaper walls, and read far better from the house. The design work is in where the steps go — a run of stairs down one edge keeps each terrace whole, whereas stairs through the middle chops both levels into unusable strips.

Almost always, but how is the question that sets the price. Options here run from barrowing through a side return, to carrying through the house on floor protection, to a conveyor over a fence, to craning material over the roof on the tightest jobs. It is the largest single cost variable on this hill and the one most commonly missing from a low quote. A patio that takes two days on a flat Eastside lot with a driveway can take four or five here, and we would rather show you that in the estimate than discover it in week two.

Usually yes, and they are frequently the most urgent thing on the property. A lot of the garden stairs on this hill were built decades ago, have settled unevenly, and now have risers that vary by an inch or two between steps — which is exactly the condition that causes falls, and it is worse on a wet Seattle evening. Rebuilding a flight properly means consistent rise across the whole run, a textured tread that is not lethal in the rain, a genuine foundation under the bottom step, and lighting. It is not a glamorous line in a landscaping budget and it is often the one with the highest real return.

For most Queen Anne properties, no — there is no blanket design review over the neighbourhood, and what you build in your own garden is governed by the normal city rules on height, setbacks and retaining walls. Individually landmarked properties are a different matter and carry their own process. The practical constraint most people actually run into is not regulatory but contextual: on a street of consistent period houses, a wall in a starkly modern material tends to read as an intrusion from every neighbouring garden as well as your own. We will build what you want, and we will tell you when we think the material choice is going to fight the street.