- Sheet
- L-5.0
- Subject
- Service area
- Locality
- Portland metro and the west side
Eight places, and the ground is different in all of them.
Twelve miles across this metro takes you from silt over gravel to clay over basalt to outwash that drains too fast. It changes what will grow, what the drainage costs and whether you will be fighting deer.
Design meetings happen anywhere in the metro. Build crews work about an hour from the yard, because a crew spending two hours a day in a truck is a crew you are paying to sit on the 217.
Portland
Multnomah County
Two completely different pieces of ground share one city name, and a design that works on one of them will fail on the other.
Low deer pressure
Lake Oswego
Clackamas County
Big treed lots on weathered basalt, a deer herd that lives here rather than passes through, and a tree ordinance that shapes the design before the first line is drawn.
Heavy deer pressure
Beaverton
Washington County
Flat ground, a dense clay layer under the topsoil, and five months a year when the water table sits a foot below your lawn.
Low deer pressure
Hillsboro
Washington County
Some of the best agricultural soil in North America is under Hillsboro. On a lot of newer lots, it is no longer under your garden.
Low deer pressure
Tigard
Washington County
Bull Mountain sheds water sideways through the soil rather than down through it, and it surfaces in the middle of somebody's garden.
Moderate deer pressure
West Linn
Clackamas County
Thin soil over Columbia River Basalt. On the bluffs you hit solid rock at knee depth, and every excavation number is provisional until you do.
Heavy deer pressure
Milwaukie
Clackamas County
Small older lots on decent ground, and two waterways that have not forgotten they are waterways.
Low deer pressure
Vancouver, WA
Clark County, Washington
Twelve miles north of inner Portland and almost everything that matters is different — the drainage, the heat, and which licence a contractor needs to be standing in your garden.
Moderate deer pressure
Not sure which of these you are in?
Put a zip code into the plant tool and it will tell you, along with five plants that suit the ground there.