Landscape design and build in Beaverton.

A good soil sitting on a bad one

Most of Beaverton is Tualatin Valley silt loam — a genuinely decent soil, eighteen inches or so of it, sitting directly on a dense clay subsoil that water moves through very slowly.

From November to April, rain passes through the good layer, reaches the clay, and stops. It does not sink; it perches. That is why a bed can be soaking in February and bone dry in August, and why the plant that died in your garden probably drowned rather than starved.

The fix is almost never more topsoil on top. It is either getting the water somewhere — a drain with a real outfall, not a pit — or raising the planting above the perched layer and choosing species that will tolerate both extremes.

Flat is the problem, not the solution

There is very little natural fall on the valley floor, so a drain needs somewhere to actually go before it is worth installing. We work out the outfall first. A french drain that terminates in a gravel-filled hole in clay is a hole full of water, and we see a great many of them.

Deer

Not an issue in most of Beaverton. It becomes one up towards Cooper Mountain and along the western edge, where the suburbs meet farmland.

The lots

Seven to ten thousand square feet, typically, with a fenced rectangle at the back and a house set close to the front. Sun is usually not the limiting factor here; drainage is.

Clean Water Services, and they inspect

Washington County's vegetated corridors along streams and wetlands are administered by Clean Water Services and they are enforced. If a stream, ditch or seasonal wetland runs anywhere near your boundary, what you may plant and where you may dig is defined before we start. It is usually workable. It is never optional.