Mill Creek was laid out as a planned city: curving streets, townhome slopes, golf-course edges, and lawns that were meant to look trimmed from the day the house sold. The soils are the soils of a graded subdivision, and the rain is the same county rain that finds every low corner. The bones are there and they are thin: a lawn, a few shrubs, a pad. Landscaping is replacing the failures and adding the patio and the drainage the closing paperwork skipped.
Snohomish County · ZIP 98012 · 2020 population 20,799
Finish what the builder started
We keep the neighborhood scale. Better plants, a real bed depth, a patio that fits the door, a wall if the side grade needs one. Irrigation adjusted so it waters plants and not windows. It should look settled, not themed.
Phasing is easy here because the yard is small. Do the drainage and the floor, then the plants. Do not buy the plants first.
The ground in Mill Creek
The expectation here is a clean edge. Lawns get mowed on a schedule, aerated before they mat down, and fertilized lightly enough that we are not just feeding the moss. Townhome and hillside lots need low walls and tight paver work more than they need a big landscape renovation. Bark beds are there to keep the mulch line straight and the weeds out of the front that faces the street.
We still find the same drainage mistakes as everywhere else: downspouts tied to nothing, and patios pitched back at the siding. The difference is that a small failure shows, because the rest of the street is kept. Native shrubs fit the greenbelts behind the houses. A tropical plant list does not survive the first wet winter, and it will not match the neighborhood even if it did.
How we do the work
Landscaping, the way we mean it, is building the yard: dirt moved, water handled, plants in the ground, bark and edges finished. It is not a mow, and it is not only a patio. When a project is really just a patio or just a drain, we call it that and we price that.
We plant what can live through a wet winter and a dry August without a full-time gardener. The sequence is always the same. Get the water right, set the hard surfaces, then plant. Plants first is how they get buried or stood in a puddle.
What we look at first
- What you want to be able to do in the yard
- The thing that is failing now: water, a slope, a dead lawn, an empty bed
- Trees that stay
- A budget, so we phase instead of half-building everything
Order of work
Demo and haul, grade and drain, hardscape, soil, plants, bark, irrigation last or with the plants. We do not mulch a bed we are about to trench. You should see the yard get rougher before it gets finished. That is the sequence, not a delay.
Phasing
If the whole yard does not fit the budget, we finish a piece that works: the drainage and the door area, for example. An even layer of unfinished everything looks like we left. A finished half looks like a plan. We prefer the second.
Plants we will not specify
Anything that wants a dry summer and no rain in winter, unless you understand it is a gamble. We plant for zone and for the wet. A plant you loved in California can be attempted in a pot. It should not be the backbone of the yard.
More from this crew
- Landscaping across Snohomish County
- Landscape design in Mill Creek
- Yard cleanup in Mill Creek
- Paver installation in Mill Creek
- French drain installation in Mill Creek
- Landscaping in Bothell
- Landscaping in Lynnwood
- Landscaping in Everett
Sources for the climate and the water
- USDA plant hardiness map for choosing plants that can take a Snohomish County winter.
- EPA WaterSense on watering less once a lawn or a new planting is established.
- EPA Soak Up the Rain on keeping roof and yard water from becoming someone else’s problem.
