Sultan sits on the Sultan River, on the way up the highway toward the trails and the passes. Yards step with the terrain. Water comes off the higher ground, crosses a lawn, and heads for the river or the ditch. A foothill landscape is walls, drains, and a flat place to stand. Ornamental beds are what we add after the bank is not moving.
Snohomish County · ZIP 98294 · 2020 population 5,458
Stabilize, then make it usable
We hold the slope, put the path where you can walk in the rain, and plant tougher natives and conifers where the soil is thin. Lawn is a small bench, or it is seed, not an acre of sod on a grade. Cleanup of the edge is often the first phase so we can see the ground.
Material access is planned. If the driveway is the limit, the design uses what we can get up it.
The ground in Sultan
The useful projects are the ones that make a sloped lot walkable: a gravel path that stays put, a rock wall where the bank is cutting, a drain at the top of the slope so the patio is not the creek. Forest edge is close. Alders and maples lean in, and after a wind the cleanup is limbs, not a few leaves on a patio.
Lawns exist on the benches. They need seed that can take shade at the tree line and a soil that is often thin. We do not promise a golf-course surface against the timber. Native mountain plants hold the cuts better than a bark bed that just slides downhill in January. Access for machines is usually fine along the highway side and tight once you are in the trees. We look at that before we promise a wall.
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 Sultan
- Yard cleanup in Sultan
- Paver installation in Sultan
- French drain installation in Sultan
- Landscaping in Monroe
- Landscaping in Gold Bar
- Landscaping in Index
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.
