Landscaping in Vancouver, WA

All of it, and it is the largest and most varied slice of our service area — Cascade Park, Fisher’s Landing, Ellsworth and Orchards in the east, Hazel Dell and Minnehaha to the north, and the older neighbourhoods around Carter Park, Shumway, Hough and Burnt Bridge Creek. We are about twenty minutes south of our Ridgefield shop.

Renovation rather than creation. In the older neighbourhoods the hardscape is now forty or fifty years old, so we are typically replacing cracked walkways and failing walls, correcting grade that has settled toward the house over decades, and working around trees that were saplings when the house was built.

More than people expect, provided the layout is deliberate. Small flat yards around Cascade Park and Fisher’s Landing do best when the whole space is designed as one — patio, seating, screening and planting working together — rather than a patio placed in the middle of a lawn, which wastes the perimeter and leaves you mowing strips.

The City of Vancouver takes stormwater seriously, and there are limits on how much of a lot can be covered with surfaces water cannot pass through — roofs, concrete, standard patios and driveways all count. Larger hardscape projects can run into them depending on your lot and zoning, which is why we raise it before you fall in love with a design.

A genuine one, and in Vancouver they are sometimes what makes a project possible at all. They let water pass through the surface into an open-graded base rather than running off, which changes how the area counts toward impervious coverage. The base build is different and more demanding than a standard patio, so it is not simply a paver swap.

Plenty of addresses with a Vancouver postal address sit in unincorporated county, particularly around Hazel Dell, Minnehaha and Orchards. It changes which department handles permits and which rules apply. We confirm it rather than guessing, because the answer occasionally surprises the homeowner.

If the slabs are cracked because of what is underneath — settled base, root heave, water travelling under them — resurfacing simply hides it for a year or two and then cracks in the same lines. Where the base is sound and the problem is cosmetic, an overlay can be worth it. We will tell you which situation you are in.

Yes, and it takes planning rather than a machine. Around Hough, Shumway and Carter Park the trees are frequently the best thing about the property. That means routing trenches away from root plates, avoiding raising grade over root zones, and accepting that some designs have to bend around a tree rather than through it.

Usually because water is arriving from somewhere — a neighbouring lot, a roof, a driveway — and your yard is where it collects, or because your grade falls to a point with no outlet. It is rarely about your soil alone. Working out where the water comes from and where it can legitimately go is the whole job.

Frequently, and it is some of the most satisfying work on the smaller east Vancouver lots. A side yard that is currently mud and a hose reel can become a gravel or paver run with proper drainage, screening and lighting. It is also where drainage problems concentrate, so it often solves two things at once.

Walls of that age in older Vancouver neighbourhoods were often built with no drainage behind them, which is exactly why they lean. Where that is the cause, rebuilding with drain rock and a real outlet is the durable answer and face repairs are a delaying tactic. We will look before telling you which.

Yes, and on the older lots it is often the better value, because the drainage, grading and access work get done once for the whole yard rather than three times for three separate projects. Phasing is fine — doing it in a planned order is what saves money.

We check it at the walkthrough, because it changes both price and method. Narrow side yards, alley access, established planting and mature trees frequently mean smaller machines or moving material by hand. Better to price that honestly up front than discover it on day one.

Yes. The brief is usually different — durability and low maintenance matter more than a showpiece design, and drainage that protects the building matters most of all. We are happy to quote to that brief rather than pushing a scheme that suits an owner-occupier.

Hardscape installed without touching the drainage first, on lots where water was always going to be the deciding factor. The patio looks superb in July and by the second February the low edge is standing in water and the base is moving. It is the cheapest thing to get right at the start and the most expensive to fix afterwards.