Landscaping in Wedgwood, Seattle

Because slope gives water somewhere to go and flat ground does not. Under Wedgwood is glacial till, a compacted layer water moves through very slowly, covered by a relatively shallow topsoil. On a sloped lot, surface water at least runs off. On a flat Wedgwood rectangle it saturates the topsoil and stays until it evaporates, which between October and March it largely does not. The fix is a drain cut to a consistent fall and routed somewhere it can actually discharge — usually a lower point at the edge of the property or a connection at the street — often paired with a slight regrade so the ground itself carries water away from the house.

On a natural lawn, realistically no — and that is the single most common reason Wedgwood families call us. From November a lawn on undrained till is saturated, so it compacts under use, the grass thins, and by February the play area is bare mud that comes into the house. Two things change it. Drainage under the lawn is the first and it improves a real lawn substantially. Where the lawn is genuinely a play surface used year-round, artificial turf on a proper drainage base with a shock pad underneath is the specification that works, and it is one of the few products that performs all twelve months in this climate.

Divide it. The instinct on a 40-by-40 rectangle is to lay the whole thing to lawn, and the result is a garden that looks large from the window and gets used for about six weekends a year. Splitting it into a defined paved area sized properly for a table and chairs, a lawn or turf area smaller than you would guess, and planting deep enough to give the boundary structure consistently makes the space feel bigger and be used far more. On these lots there is also room for the thing most Seattle gardens cannot fit — a genuine route through the garden rather than just an edge around it.

They are a constraint to design around rather than a problem in themselves. The established north-end streets carry large maples, cedars and Douglas firs whose root systems run considerably wider than the canopy suggests, and excavating a patio base through a major root plate can kill a tree slowly enough that nobody links the two. Where a tree matters we shift the layout, reduce the excavation depth, or move the hard surface outside the critical root zone. The other side of it: where a tree is already in decline, taking it out before the hardscape goes in is much cheaper than getting equipment back over a finished patio later.