Ballard is dense, and density is the whole story of landscaping here. Lots are narrow, houses sit close, and a large share of the back gardens we work in are reached only through a side yard barely wide enough for a wheelbarrow.
Access decides the job
Before anything is designed, the question is whether material can reach the work area. A side yard that takes a wheelbarrow and a yard that a truck can back into produce completely different budgets for the same patio.
On a Ballard townhouse the answer is often that everything comes through by hand, which changes the material choice as much as the price. Smaller-format pavers rather than large-format slabs. Bagged material rather than bulk. Staged deliveries instead of one drop.
We look at this on the first walk and price it honestly, rather than discovering it in week two.
Small gardens carry a lot
A Ballard back garden is frequently the only outdoor space a household has, and it gets used hard. That pushes the design toward defined hard surfaces you can put furniture on, planting with a long season of interest rather than one good fortnight, and edges that hold their line without constant correction.
Lawn is often the wrong answer here. A patch of grass too small to be useful, too shaded to grow evenly and too awkward to mow is worse than a paved area with generous planting around it.
Parking strips and the wind
Parking strips are their own problem: city right-of-way with rules about what may go in them, utilities beneath, foot traffic across, and full sun where the rest of the lot is shaded. They suit drought-tolerant planting far better than the grass usually found there.
Closer to Shilshole and Golden Gardens, salt-laden wind narrows the plant list in the same way it does in Edmonds. Exposed frontages take the hit and the planting should be chosen accordingly.
What we do here
Small-garden design and build, patios and paths sized to real furniture, planting for shaded enclosed spaces, parking strip conversions, and recurring maintenance on a rhythm that suits compact gardens.