Landscaping in Sammamish, WA

Because a plateau has nowhere to shed it to. The ground here is glacial till, which water passes through very slowly, and the plateau surface is broadly level — so unlike a hillside lot where surface water at least runs away, water arriving on this ground largely stays where it lands until it evaporates. Between October and March it does not evaporate. There are also genuine wetland and seasonally saturated pockets scattered across the plateau, some of which look entirely ordinary in summer. This is why we look at a Sammamish property in terms of where water can discharge to before designing anything that sits on the ground.

More than people expect, and coverage here is among the densest in the region. Klahanie, Trossachs, Sahalee and most of the newer plateau developments operate associations whose standards commonly reach fence height and style, hard surface materials, front-of-house planting and appearance, and sometimes tree removal. Approval is usually achievable but it is a real step with a real timeline, and the version of this that costs money is discovering it after materials are ordered for a spring start. We ask on the first visit and produce drawings and specifications in a form suitable for submission.

With more definition than most owners initially want. The default on a quarter-acre lot is a very large lawn with a border around the edge, and the result is a garden that is impressive from the window and used only in one corner. Dividing it works better: a paved area genuinely sized for how you entertain, a lawn or turf area with a defined purpose and shape, planting deep enough to give the boundary presence, and a route that connects them rather than an edge that circles them. On lots this size the buried work should be planned across the whole design even if the build is staged over several seasons.

Often, and the reason is specific to this ground. A natural lawn on a plateau lot that holds water is saturated and unusable from November to March, compacts under any winter use, and needs constant work to recover each spring — while also being large enough that the maintenance is a genuine commitment. Turf on a properly built drainage base solves the winter problem outright and removes the mowing. The critical qualifier is that base: on ground that already fails to drain, turf laid over unimproved soil traps water underneath and performs worse than the lawn it replaced. Where a lot needs a drain first, we do that first.