Portland, Oregon · Residential landscape design and build · Since 2013

Designed for year seven.

Every new garden looks thin the day it goes in. We design for the year it doesn’t — and we will show you that year before you spend anything.

Start a design See the gardens

Design phase: From $3,800
Where we work: Portland metro and the west side
Oregon LCB: DEMO-LCB-9482

A brick path with moss growing in its joints curving away between deep planting — sword ferns and low evergreen shrubs at the near edge, large-leaved rhododendrons closing overhead, and a tree turning orange behind them, all under flat grey light. — Legend — what is in the frame
POMPolystichum munitum — western sword fern
ACCAcer circinatum — vine maple
GASGaultheria shallon — salal
ASCAsarum caudatum — western wild ginger
Year nine, OctoberEvery plant in this frame went in at roughly a third of the size it is now.

Drag it. Watch the gaps close.

A real planting scheme from a garden in Alameda, drawn in section. Every plant grows at its own rate to the size it actually reaches here — not the size on the nursery label.

Watch the red-flowering currant after year six. It is supposed to do that.

L-2.1Section A–A′Alameda Ridge3/8" = 1'-0"

InstallRoughly forty per cent of this bed is bare mulch on the day it goes in, and it should be. The spacings are set to mature spread, not to how it looks when the truck leaves.

Plant schedule

Sizes update with the control above. Select a plant to pick it out of the drawing.

Every plant in the section, with its size now and at maturity
Code	Botanical name	Common name	At year 0	At maturity
CAO	Carex obnupta	slough sedge	1 ft × 1 ft	3 ft × 3 ft
JUP	Juncus patens	spreading rush	1 ft × 1 ft	2.5 ft × 2 ft
POM	Polystichum munitum	western sword fern	1 ft × 1 ft	3.5 ft × 4 ft
TEG	Tellima grandiflora	fringecup	1 ft × 1 ft	2.5 ft × 1.5 ft
ACC	Acer circinatum	vine maple	6 ft × 4 ft	18 ft × 16 ft
RIS	Ribes sanguineum	red-flowering currant	2.5 ft × 2 ft	8 ft × 7 ft
BLS	Struthiopteris spicant	deer fern	1 ft × 1 ft	2 ft × 2.5 ft
ASC	Asarum caudatum	western wild ginger	0.5 ft × 1 ft	0.5 ft × 4 ft
VAO	Vaccinium ovatum	evergreen huckleberry	1.5 ft × 1.5 ft	6 ft × 5 ft
STP	Stewartia pseudocamellia	Japanese stewartia	8 ft × 4 ft	25 ft × 18 ft
MAN	Berberis nervosa	Cascade Oregon grape	1 ft × 1 ft	2.5 ft × 3 ft
GAS	Gaultheria shallon	salal	1 ft × 1 ft	4 ft × 6 ft

This is a planting plan doing what planting plans do. The design phase is $3,800 and produces yours — planted for year seven, not for install day.

Start a design What you get for it

Year one, year four, year nine.

Nobody publishes the first one. It is the one you will be standing in next spring.

Coarse fresh bark chippings filling the frame, pale tan and dry on top, with fragments of split wood and a few dead leaves caught in the surface. — Year oneForty per cent bare mulch. That is correct spacing.

A narrow stone path almost swallowed by planting — ferns arching in from both sides at knee height and tall white umbels of flower leaning over the stone, in soft green light with no direct sun. — Year fourThe fern layer closes. The weeding drops away.

A close view of an old stone path where thick green moss has filled every joint between the setts and crept over the edges of the stones, with fallen leaves and low green planting at the margins. — Year nineMoss in the joints. Nobody put it there.

Three gardens at three ages, not one garden three times — we would rather say so than let you assume otherwise. Every photograph on this site carries the age of the planting.

See the gardens

A third of your budget goes underground.

It is the line clients try to cut, and the only line that decides whether the garden is alive in ten years. Plants are cheap and replaceable. The ground they are in is neither.

Share of a build: 18–30%; Soil and drainage
Time on site: 2 days; Ripping and amending
Visible afterwards: None; Nothing to photograph

Detail L-3.2Bed preparation, section

Left — four inches of imported mix spread over ground that a machine has driven on. The plants root into the good layer, meet the compaction pan, and turn sideways. They survive for two or three years on irrigation and then die in the first dry August.
Right — the subsoil is ripped to eighteen inches before anything is imported, so there is no boundary for a root to stop at, then eight inches of amended topsoil over the top.

Gardens, with their ages.

See all five

A new garden needs looking after. Here is exactly what, and what it costs.

Years one to three

Deep watering twice a week through the first summer
Weeding before anything sets seed
An inch of compost over the beds each March
Formative pruning from year two — twenty minutes, three times a year
No fertiliser. It is not that kind of planting

If it does not get it

Bindweed and blackberry establish in the open ground before the planting closes over it. Half your plants spend three years competing with weed roots instead of growing.

By year three you have a bed with permanent gaps — the exact thing you paid us to avoid — and a perennial weed problem that costs more to fix than the maintenance would have.

What it costs

Per visit: $340
A year, on a $60,000 garden: $6,800
Cadence: Every 3 weeks; March to October, monthly through winter

No contract. Stop it at the end of any season.

Rather do it yourself? We spend two hours with you in the garden in April of year one, showing you what to cut and what to leave. Included in every build.

Rather someone else did? Ask, and we will name two firms we would trust with our own work. We are not offended.

Start a design The whole of it, in detail