Landscape design and build in West Linn.

Twelve to twenty-four inches, then basalt

West Linn sits on the basalt bluffs above the Willamette. Soil depth varies enormously across a single property — three feet in one corner, eight inches in another — and below it is rock that needs a hydraulic hammer rather than a bucket.

This changes the design, not just the price. A sunken patio, a deep planting pit for a specimen tree, a trench for a drain line: each of those is a different order of cost here than a mile away in Milwaukie. Often the right answer is to build up rather than dig down, and a raised terrace on this ground can be both cheaper and better than a cut one.

Steep, fast, and it has to go somewhere legal

Water moves off these slopes quickly and concentrating it is how neighbours end up in disputes. Discharging a drain over a bluff edge is not a solution. On the steeper properties we design for infiltration where the soil depth allows it and for controlled, dispersed release where it does not.

Deer

Among the heaviest in the metro, especially the wooded streets above the river. Assume everything unprotected and palatable will be eaten in its first spring, because the new planting is the most tender thing in the neighbourhood.

The lots

Large, wooded and often steep, with mature Douglas fir that dominates the light and the root competition. Working out what will actually grow under established fir is half the design here.

Steep slopes and water resource areas are reviewed

West Linn has both a Water Resource Area overlay and slope-related review provisions. Where they apply, they affect what can be built and how close to a boundary or a bluff. We identify them at survey stage.