Steve Snedeker’s Landscaping and Gardening Blog

I have no idea who she is and I hope she doesn’t mind terribly but her head sure did fit real nice into the hole in that rock. If you enlarge it, you’ll see what I mean. That rock and many others are among many features abounding at Portland’s Chinese garden – a small urban Wonderland of lushness, quiet natural and man made beauty, set right smack downtown in the midst of it all.

Well-maintained and elegant, some phenonomenally gorgeous plantings adorn the garden, from this well-trained Pine to the Weeping Willow behind it whose Spring and Summer look adds dramatic softness – if such a thing can be said – to the ambiance. The building we see in the picture above is “The Boat Shaped Pavilion” or “Painted Boat in Misty Rain” – an altogether appropriate title for a city that gets the Winter rainfall of Portland. I got lucky this day on mid February, catching some good solid sunlight and thoroughly enjoying every second of it.

I was able to get close pictures of some of the things I like best about the garden, especially including this roof line of the “Waterside Pavilion”, with another gorgeous Pine framing it. Because of the protecting nature of the walled Garden and the closeness of the buildings, Palm Trees are allowed some growth inside. They barely eke out an existence – if at all – in Portland, proper, but they make a fabulous and very rich addition to this landscape. In Summer, the Banana Trees also show up, spreading proudly and looking every bit as lush. At this time of year in the garden, they are pretty much just stumps.

Here is yet another look at “The Boat”, featuring more water this time. I will now commence to including more pictures of water, the essential completing element to this Garden, especially inasmuch as it occupies a full one third of the grounds. Prior to this – in my other posts – I stuck to some details, but the pictures to come will illustrate a more total picture of this charming place and the role water plays in it over all.

Here’s where the water “begins”, cascading down this very recessed waterfall and into the large pond below. I love the inset provisions of the falls, especially since I know, as a maker of these sorts of waterfalls and creek, the incredible amount of piercing noise running water can make. By recessing the falls, it serves a couple of functions:

1. It does keep the noise down, protected as it is by those protruding sets of columns on either side.

2. It does not overwhelm in any sense – aural or visual – from the natural peacefulness of the Garden itself.

In itself, it is not particularly striking, although it has its own gorgeousness by virtue of the surrounding rocks. In the picture below, the waterfall is recessed, to the left, barely discernible.

In the next picture, we are standing mere feet away from the falls but toward the other side, Westward. As you can see, there are essentially large columns surrounding the recessed falls, allowing huge gaps or holes to vent some of the sound and fury of the rushing water.

Naturally, the falls serves to purify and aerate the recirculating water nicely, as well as to provide a very legitimate, yet not overwhelming point of interest. It was exceedingly well-designed in my opinion, for the reasons listed. Everything in this garden most definitely works as a whole. While outstanding in its own right, any feature here blends with the others to simply give one an uplifting sense of elegance and congruity. It is organic and full of vibrancy, resonating before you catch your own handfuls of wonder. This is the work of the professional’s professional – and it stands as a virtual teaching aid for the intention and meaning of Feng Shui.

Looking back now at “The Hall Of Brocade Clouds” – the main “meeting hall” – we see the pine once again framing the building and surrounded by water. Another look below at the Hall, some water and seen above the hand-carved granite railings and bridge, constructed in China and sent over for assembly by the artisans who actually made them:

Those granite railings and that bridge lead to pretty much my favorite spot in the Garden, “The Moon-Locking Pavilion”, a wonderfully-named gazebo-like structure set in the middle of the lake and offering a spot to see the moon’s reflection in the water around it. There are always people there when I visit and kids flock to it. Notice as well, we have blooms! The very early Citisus plants are popping open some early yellow. In fact, there was a bold and adventurous Forsythia I somehow missed getting a picture of, dangit, but now that I think of it, I do have a gorgeous Camelia to look at following the Moon-Locking Pavilion. Let’s hurry now.

Camelias! OK, I’ll grant you they are not overwhelming or magnificent on their own. What they DO represent for this Winter-weary soul is the obvious – flowers and the coming Spring.

A closer look a desperate man can love:

So, I was excited about the whole darn thing, you betcha. After all, I helped make the place. It is quite an event any time I go, reminiscing about small items of construction, seeing the development of plants, and sometimes answering questions because people are curious about small items of interest. Once engaged, people tend to hang on a while, asking a few more and enduring my own distinct loquaciousness which plagues me owing to my love of people. It’s a true fault.

As the American Indians liked to say: “It was a good day.”

The Pathways

(click on images to enlarge)

Once inside the Garden, the unfolding commences – it is truly amazing that there are so many little vistas packed inside of what is in reality just a city block’s worth of a Chinese Garden. From the original “wince” at the new price of admission (it went up to $8) and the newer economic realities, it is still fine enough to set reluctance’s aside and to perhaps concentrate even more on what the garden offers. Complex and entertaining from a strictly architectural perspective, what has been built here is quite remarkable by any standards. The purity of concept and design has imported the principles of the classic Chinese Garden virtually intact. Whereas a Japanese Garden informs us within the spaces between events and invites the imagination to struggling heights, the Chinese gardens are better able to assault the senses in tasteful yet plentiful method. There are little “miracles” abounding. Let’s use walkways as an example:

Complex patterns composed of a wide variety of stones are inset with a very specific depth in mind, better able to “massage the feet” during the walk – a humorous but apt statement (and intention!) made by the designer of this Garden in conversation with me during the construction of it. Ironically, the City, in its wisdom, declared a rather large swath of the pathways to be “failures” in terms of building code, requiring them to be destroyed, then replaced. The problem was handicapped access and the 1/4″ depth the small stones were set at – they were deemed “too deep” by their reckonings. They required them reset to 1/8″ deep, so as to allow smoother passage by wheelchairs. Interestingly, while a setback, this was done post-haste with most of the grumbling coming from those of us who watched the men work with our own version of intense respect and admiration. The dudes laying the stones smiled and moved along, unperturbed. Then they asked me for more cigarettes. I was The Man.

Their constant jabbering was a memory of pure pleasure.

The smiles of the workers were my most lingering image of these crews and of the overall Zeitgeist of the entire project. Good-natured to a fault and well aware of their roles and of what they were constructing, they were hard-working and pleasant – true professionals at their extremely unique craft. As you can see from these pathway pictures, they were also very, very good at what they did.

These sinuous ribbons for traffic are like these magical transports, easy to follow and containing their very own integral element of whimsy and delight in and of themselves. The remainder of the garden looks as sleek as a thoroughbred race horse and maybe more interesting. But it is here – at the most very basic level of what propels one around the park – that the intensity of interest serves as a motivating engine for the more whole body and soul experience. When you are walking on Heaven, the rest of it all just falls into place and your expectations rise. Here’s the deal – you never get disappointed.

I adore the detail, myself.

Always surprising, the paths change in pattern without your own attention even considering where it took place. It is some mysteriously-designed process of inserted surprise, tucked away in detail so remote you have to go back to try and locate the pattern transitions. I swear, a pathway fanatic such as myself could spend hours here just inspecting the path itself – no, wait! I did that. For days, during construction, in fact. I did learn something extremely worthwhile, by the way: Yes, you can do this at home. I’m being serious, actually. Granted, while the labor is such that any bids I made for installing something similar were too rich for the clients I plied with the idea, I may have just found the wrong folks to try it out on or possibly chosen the wrong materials. But I can guarantee this: I would do this in a New York Minute for anyone who would pay for this enduring and fascinating surface. Sigh, maybe when I get rich, I’ll do it for myself.

It truly never ends here. It is one constantly absorbing and totally relaxing venture into one of Man’s greatest conceptual achievements, modest yet complex and amazingly abundant. And this post has dealt merely with the walkways!

Next, we’ll visit the buildings and plantings and see what the 33% of the place composed of water itself provides a viewer. Here – below – is a small hint of what a building and it’s cozy and intimate views can provide – and bear in mind, another angle of viewing is just as remarkable, from the same vantage point:

You would think those seemingly ubiquitous huge buildings surrounding this Chinese Garden would affect your travels inside it. From the pictures here and elsewhere, it is so hard to ignore the substantial urban effects of the neighboring towers. Yet, until you have seen it yourself, take it from me that one of the true marvels of this place is how what is outside the walls of this incredibly intimate and sensuous garden has so little – if any – effect on its interior.

(click on all pictures to enlarge)

When you see the buildings in pictures later, you go “Oh yeah, buildings.”

This is a still-involving masterpiece of design, concept and installation. I happen to have a special attachment to the “installation” part owing to the fact that I was involved during its construction. I remember every support under all that dirt and I recall boring holes in the concrete framework under every one of those buildings and walls. I recall the digging of the trees that populate it now. I even recall finding those elusive and perfect trees in some of the weirdest places – from the highways to nursery “back 40’s”. I post about that, in fact, in this blog right here - where I give more detail on some of the construction aspects. But today is about the garden, not me.

From its unprepossessing facade outside on the street -

To it’s entryway and gate -

One is not quite prepared for the marvelous enchantment once one passes these portals and goes inside -

The floor of the first “room” alone assaults the senses with its spectacular complexity. It’s hard to look up. Maybe it’s just me, but I could look at this paving for literal hours – wait – it is just me. Nevertheless, walking surfaces such as this are repeated throughout the entire project, none of them repetitive in pattern, all with a different inlay, including differing stones themselves. We’ll see more as we walk together.

Looking up, we behold the most amazing sort of aperture, set as it is as a feast for the eye in a remarkable, deep and stunning depiction of the meaning of “Feng Shui” itself. Carried by design, we stumble into yet another wonder, led by our senses alone to the next unfolding of some of the genius in Chinese Garden design.

“Qi rides the wind and scatters, but is retained when encountering water.”

Across the stone patio, we see this hole in the wall inviting exploration. There are many places like this in the garden. Some are major vistas within the garden itself, offering hidden promise for the explorer -

Others are these wild and crazy small apertures, leading the mind to yet another utterly involving destination – close but still distant – like the promise of hope, or love – cradled by mankind’s most heartfelt perspectives – cut in simple yet supple, sensuous shapes and seemingly sculpted for no apparent reason – right into the walls themselves. It’s like a gift.

Oh there is something on the other side – but what is it? How large? How meaningful? Honestly, I don’t think I have ever encountered a more pleasant mystery.

And not all apertures are alike. Some are just windows -

But interesting windows. Fascinating windows, made for humans to enjoy not only Nature but his own artifice -

This is a very cool garden. Obviously, waxing as poetic as I am, I adore it. Next post, we’ll discover what all this “Qi” thing and the water alludes to. Maybe see some plants. I’m pretty big on Mahonia.

Yeah, that’s the ticket. Like it?

RosesinGardens

I do this now and again, describe other blogs and why I like them. Philip’s blog, for example, I highlighted earlier – well written and special in every way with his own super high quality photo’s and poetic style, Phillip makes wonderful reading. It’s hard to say enough good things about the good-natured, uplifting and very literate Phillip.

The pictures here I have lifted from my next featured blogger’s site – hopefully with his kind permission.

Today, I want to explore – with you – a Danish friend of mine who specializes in roses. Niels Plougmann is yet another good natured chap with an astounding focus and breadth of knowledge about roses. Already, I have learned oodles not only relating to the various species of this stunning bloom but also to accurate renditions of climatic possibilities of the various sub species.  As well, Niels fully covers more mundane concerns like favorable or unfavorable soil conditions, growing habits and the blooming frequency for the featured families. Naturally, Niels also combines advice on the care, feeding and overall maintenance of the West’s most emblematic flower – the Rose. Rosicrucians unite – here we come!

Recently Niels took a break from posting and I missed him. I spent time at his site, looking around for him and left a note or two, urging him to come back, healthy and wise as ever. Obviously my imploring worked, because Niels is back in action and as frisky as ever! This is a good thing. I take full credit for getting Niels back into the robust world of educating us morons about his favorite plant. We are in his movie!

Honestly, give yourself a treat and visit this marvelously informative and enthusiastic garden designer. Good natured to a fault and informative beyond measure, Niels offers that rarest of things – great insight with a true human sensibility. The world could use a few more of this guy.

(click all pictures to enlarge)

This group of nuts is enjoying themselves while their poor hard-working landscapers continue flailing away in the efforts to make them this happy year-round. There were always kids around us during this project and the truth is they made it more fun. Likable and almost always helpful, at worst they did their damage at night after we had left. We knew what we were heading into, however, since most of the guys working with me had kids of their own, as did I. Let me say right now, kids rock. As long as we don’t crush any, they can play along any time. A definite kid-friendly crew there.

This project is stuck back in the Ponderosa Pines along the route between Reno and Lake Tahoe, an upscale neighborhood tucked back into the hills. Relaxed and pretty friendly – with some notable exceptions – the ‘hood was home to bank managers and contractors, architects and doctors who seemingly “arrived” with places like these. At least, that was our purpose as the landscapers – to give a dream home some fleshed-out sensibility. It was a high-budget effort for a contractor who had done very well indeed.

While the above picture shows things upon opening it up – it was the first day of swimming – those below here give a better illustration of what we encountered when the pool work itself was almost complete – done by others – and when we began our own work in more earnest.

We also had an element complicating matters which showed up at the worst time, lol:

Life at 7,000 feet above sea level! It could snow almost any time, particularly in Spring. The fact was, in Fall, you waited until the first one, then went back to town and forgot about the area for 5 months, barring an unseasonable Winter. Summers, gratefully, the weather could be 5-10 degrees cooler than a hot Reno, Nevada where folks were dealing with 100 degree weather. Add the shade and you have the perfect mid year project.

We had helped at various stages to get the the pool underway, including the initial excavations, using a monster excavator or two. This sucker was going to be 11′ deep at the deep end, owing to the extreme possibility that the “Tree House” being erected would get someone diving in from virtually ‘high dive’ climes.

Looking closely, boulders can been seen strewn around the upper edges of the swimming pool. These were not ‘afterthoughts’ whatsoever. They were obviously always in the plan but they reqired more than just your average “Plop a rock in place” effort. These babies are cemented in place to prevent eventual cracking of the pool by weight and settling. Not only that, but we attached substantial angle iron braces to the boulders themselves as a sort of “staking”, to embed them in the native soil. The ground underneath was compacted thoroughly prior even to that. Thus we had the boulders which were penetrated and secured to the thick angle iron bracing, then set in cement. All this was done prior to the acceptance of the soils by the swimming pool contractor upon commencing his own work. Here’s a reasonable picture of one or two of the granite boulders, weighing in at about 5 tons. The big one there was the largest, weighing in at about 5 tons. This is not your every day pebble!

I’ll continue this next time. This, much like the Chinese Garden in Portland, Oregon, remains one of the most challenging and fascinating projects I ever worked on.

We had always been around during the construction of the pool,  The pool-makers would call and ask for back filling, once things became settled in the ground itself.  We paid a lot of attention to the future and the last foot or so of back-filling was devoted to putting in gravel and base material.  With the budget we had, this place will outlast the house by a century or so.  It could well be one of the most compacted surfaces I ever installed. I am positive it is in the 99 percentile of compaction.

So we began installing pavers around the pool.  We attended to drainage issues and found it necessary to install the drain shown protruding in the picture above.  The pavers we used were Belgarde’s “Bergerac” Pavers, an expensive but gorgeously-antiqued model, set in a random pattern.  They were also an additional inch thick!  These big beauties came in at 3 1/4″ thick, providing a huge challenge for not only our cutting apparatii (gas-powered table saw with a diamond blade) but also requiring substantial grinding for the wild number of curves.  Talk about labor intensive!

Obviously, we had other issues, such as a fire pit shown in the bottom picture.  The necessity to hand-shape curving pavers was especially intense when around boulders, as can be seen above.  The irregularities don’t seem so drastic when the boulders first get placed.  But, wow, they get intense when the finishing starts.

I am thinking the project lasted almost 2 months.  There was a lot going on in general – a water feature which was designed to appear to be supply the pool water from the front yard and a 130 foot creek, originating at a waterfall out front.  We tried to make the area behind the falls by the spa appear to be a bridge just to enhance this idea. 

At any rate, it was intense but as we neared completion and began planting, we started to see things coming together nicely.

Typical of this blog, owing to my usual tendency to take multitudinous pictures ‘in progress’, I am having some trouble finding the final pictures taken of this pool project. I often take pictures for legal and educational reasons, the truth is.  I like proving the work was done appropriately.  It has less to do with suspicious motives or anything else, although in the event of contestations, the record is right there.  I just feel the clients feel better served knowing some of the history put into what they see. It also serves me extremely well in this blog because people can get a much better sense of what actually goes into a landscaping project.  When I tell clients to “Expect Beirut”, lol, I need a reason.  I do indeed mention that landscaping is just about 80% preparation and 20% finishing.  That’s the God’s truth, the fact is.

The picture above has to do for now.  It being wet illustrates the overall look when we finally put a bright sealer on top of the pavers, giving it a permanent “wet look”.

A little more perspective along the side:

When I find (grrrrrrr) the others, I will update this.  It looked fabulous, planted and sealed. I guess you’ll have to take my word for it.  There was a party opening it officially to the neighborhood, friends and family which was a challenge to survive.  I made it and slept over that night, lol.

The Webster’s Dictionary definition of a “Pest” is:

1: pest:   something resembling a pest in destructiveness ; especially : a plant or animal detrimental to humans or human concerns (as agriculture or livestock production)

2: one that pesters or annoys

I have no problem locating garden and landscape application for both these definitions. In fact, I can and will elaborate. I just hope I don’t lose my head and get all inappropriate. Bugs and critters…….bugs and critters, sigh. These are the true banes of landscaping and gardening.

The mosquito is probably the world King of Pests. It is estimated to infect 700 million people a year, often with Malaria but equally often by infecting with parasites either attached to their bodies or from redistribution among humans. Luckily for me, I have lived in the North West US where they are not the plague they can be in the American South or, say on other continents. But I have definitely had my bouts with “skeeters”.

Aphids, meanwhile, are a species of bug I sure know well. It’s stunning how quickly they can envelop an entire tree, eating and curling and misshaping the leaves, leaving a “honeydew” mist of sticky stuff. Ugh. In Reno, ants are a plague. I am also talking “fire ants”, miserable little suckers that bite. It hurts, too! Mites, slugs, wasps, mud dobbers, bees, spiders……….what a Rogue’s gallery of insects and pests, all of whom I have had to deal with at one time or another. And when you get rid of them, they come back, lol. It’s almost like we moved into their territory.

But wait! We did!

Above all the various ‘pests’, critters are the ones whose territory we invaded most. Heck, for the insects, we’re pretty much just a food source in one way or another. But mice, squirrels, raccoons, gophers, moles, voles – all these characters once lived where we just moved to. In Lake Tahoe, it gets worse. Bears and cougars, anyone?

The Vole – Cute and naughty

I once built this gorgeous water feature, all special with this series of cascading waterfalls, connected by a creek, all lit at night and really, one of the best waterfall systems I ever made. But the owner called numerous times, complaining of leaks. Obviously, we had to address it. As we uncovered the liner below, we found tons of small holes – really tiny – in all sorts of different places. As we relined these areas, the calls continued and we found new holes in new spots, all the same. When we pulled the liner up this time, we noticed a system of holes leading into the liner area. They looked like “mole holes”, basically. What I found out from inquiring of an older gent with his own deep landscaping history was that this was undoubtedly the work of “voles”. He even described the entire episode before I did.

“Yep,” he smiled, “they like the taste of EPDM liner. They think it’s salt.”

Needless to say, we fixed it all but it required putting a barrier of a thick filtercloth under the liner, something we never failed to do following that. It was the type of lesson we’re always learning.

Obviously, I have faced all these dilemmas and more, thus my obvious distaste for the lot of them. But they aren’t going away.

How do I deal with them?

Many times it depends on the timing and the identification. If we can catch an aphid infestation early enough, we can remedy it with insecticidal soaps. No harm, no foul, a non toxic and pretty clean way of dealing. The soaps tend to stick around a while in somewhere like Reno, with so little rainfall. But other times, we face a true uphill battle, one that is too much for someone with my small capacity and time to deal with. I generally call in an expert like someone from Terminix. These guys do this every day and they come when asked, and absolutely promptly. That’s huge for a contractor, especially when I am holding a client’s or former client’s hand while they worry about their place. In fact, Terminix did more than just a little for me and a slew of my contracting friends in both Reno and Portland. I actually discovered them in Santa Cruz, California originally, because the area has such an incredibly bad termite problem. Man, how many houses have I seen with all that blue tarp completely covering them?

We actually discovered termites at more than one place, from the out of doors. It turns out if they are found in the wood structures surrounding the house, there is an excellent chance they will be in or under the home as well. When I faced termites, I always made the call – and I do mean always. These guys can eat through a house in short order. Mentioning the discovery to a homeowner was never pleasant owing to the implications and the threat to the value and the home itself. It would always result in calls to a pest control agency – really, the only folks who can effectively deal with real and serious infestations.

With “critters”, now, we reach a whole other plane of misery. Raccoons have set up shop in the crawl spaces of homes, bearing kids, living life cycles all without the knowledge of the homeowners above. It is, of course, the same with all the animals subject to nocturnal habits and who exist outside our purview in general. I won’t even mention the skunk our dog encountered in Santa Cruz and the events that had me cleaning the house, deck and my truck with literal gallons of tomato juice to get rid of a smell that sickens me to this day.

We tend to try and trap them, usually. But that’s when we are close by or working there. Once again, when there is a plague of rodents and small animals, I like to call someone in. Yep, I call the same dudes, Terminix, simply because they have solved these problems for me successfully. Rodent control, for me, is just wishful thinking and I fully realize that.

Then we get to areas that abut Nature in a bigger way. Deer, for example, love flowers. The ever-cute bunny rabbit I sometimes want to play a successful Elmer Fudd on! They eat some plants right down to the nub – and it happens overnight! We use as many critter-aversive solutions as we can find. We used to use blood meal around plants because it did tend to keep some herbavores away. It could work on deer and some rabbits. But ground squirrels loved it! Here is a small list of items we have used to repel the larger creatures:

Panther Pee, Coyote urine, (I’m being serious here), the hottest peppers (wash your hands after handling! word from the wise here , and the ulitmate of all – The Fence. We make sure and attach an impenetrable barrier of hardware cloth or chicken wire to the possible entry areas of fences, most notably at the bottoms, to simply keep them away. In the end, the fence is Man’s way of telling deer they look nice but they need their own food. And the same with those Wascawwy Wabbits!

I am open to suggestions on any of these dilemmas. They remain a constant factor for all of us in one way or the other and they can cause some real serious problems. I would invite all to suggest cures in the realization that I’ll probably actually try them. I make a good Guinea Pig. Oops, another critter. See what I mean?

After spending 4 years maintaining properties for a company in Vancouver, British Columbia, I was thrust into a landscaping position owing to the death of the owner. His wife was still involved and she trusted me and her other main landscaper hugely. He was this big Hungarian man who remains an all-time favorite person of mine and to whom I owe the greatest debts of gratitude in the way and depth in which he taught me the trade. This was the bigger money end of the firm and a revelation to me in its creative possibilities. Once there, I never returned to maintenance. But my respect for it as a real craft in its own right and as a vital component of a successful and gorgeous landscape has remained.

Maintenance has become far more than “mowing grass”. Of course, it includes lawn services as always, but it has also become an interesting combination of skills and needs. Nowadays, when I am asked to supply a lawn care specialist, I generally have a couple close at hand. I will often either opt for a new person I have met (and vetted) who might be struggling to form his own business and, while representing something of a risk, will be hungry and eager to make it work.

Or I will have opted for a recognized and responsible company, like Tru Green. In most cases, especially where any mistake could jeopardize my own credibility, Tru Green has been a great partner. They supply a fertilizer regimen which is predictable and reliable and they tend to have the professionals on staff who can diagnose diseases, pests and other problems, such as over-watering, in pretty quick order – in time to save it. I had a great relationship with these guys in Reno and they were perfectly reliable and competent. The real bottom line was that I could safely forget about maintenance concerns because it would be in good hands.

After all, it’s quite a feat to go from this:

To This:

And you want to stay with the new and improved version, don’t you?

Or, say, go from this:

To this:

A good maintenance program is every bit as vital to keeping a landscape looking gorgeous as the initial work. In fact, I have seen far too many landscapes deteriorate for the lack of adequate maintaining. Fertilizing, plant identification and fertilization, disease and pest control are all aspects of keeping a garden looking good and every single one of them is one more duty I cannot have time for. I am always on the the next big thing, bottom line. Thus my concern is that the owners arrange a good lawn care services firm to keep their place as fit as they can. Since so many of my clients are youngish with careers and kids going on,  demanding oodles of their time, it fits even snugger.

It is difficult to insist enough on taking care of a landscape in the proper way. What is equally unusual in these hurried days in which we come home to “yet another chore” is the fact that it doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg to get someone in. The height of wisdom for  someone who spends the dollars to install a killer landscape is for them to also do what it takes to maintain it.

A gorgeous lawn in the right place is a wonderful thing. Big or small, they make life wonderful.

I know, I know. Drainage concerns are about as fascinating as watching paint dry, just less so. In my frantic efforts in this blog to allow you all to peer over the shoulder of what a landscape designer/installer faces however, I would certainly be remiss in not giving this “take”. In any thorough look at landscaping, omitting this issue of how we face and what we do with the accumulated water from rainfall (and other sources) on the strips of land as large as we deal with would be pretty uncivilized, frankly. The fact is, it is the first thing we ever look at. Bar none. So bear with a shovel-wielding, backhoe-driving contractor for yet another teeth-grinding trip through the uber-fascinating world of drain water. Zzzzzzzzzzzzz.

The creek bed drain below is taken from the same example project I featured in Part I. As mentioned, these items posed a pretty splendid solution to the larger issues of how to deal with rainfall on the landscape. Generally sloped to receive runoff, these channels allow water to leave the project, en route to safer and less destructive places.

Other projects also have in-built reasons for drains and, frankly, most of them we won’t see. The issue is to either make a drain system organic with the design or to hide them. Since drainage is a strictly functional problem, and landscaping designs are such cosmetic enterprises, it is often better not seen nor heard.

The point with all this is to appreciate the respect one needs to maintain towards rain, snow and all the potential problems they can present. Water trapped under a home can bleed it’s humid evaporation upwards, causing mildews and molds which are unhealthy and foul-smelling. And, unfortunately, not all homes are constructed with adequate drain systems surrounding their foundations, another vulnerable point in water issues. What I have found is that we landscapers have become one of the rectifiers of these problems – and, as time has gone on, perhaps the only possible ones outside of calling the home builder back to reshape the entire property.

So it became something I consider almost foremost when I analyze the possibilities and challenges of any project. Generally, of course, we slope all patio and walkway surfaces appropriately, usually at a 1-2% slope. This takes the water outwards away from problems. But what then? Taking the water away from a home is important as it can be, but what about when water is directed away from a structure towards another structure, such as a free-standing wall?

The amount of pipe under this entire edifice shown above and below, from the two waterfall systems to dealing with both walls, measures in the hundreds of feet. The hidden drains and their sources measure in the smallest percentiles of slope but are enough for water to find and then get conducted away. We managed to hide the collection points for runoff possibilities in this project well enough. After all, rocks can hide a multitude of things. But there is another entire problem facing the catchments -  its final emergence. Where does it go, if not the street? What we found on this project was that we had to disperse the runoff enough to keep from eroding the hillside to the rear. That required yet another measure of construction all on its own.

Some drains are as straightforward as they can be. We will often just simply run a water test and see where it tends to go. Who woulda thought???    On the creek bed below, we found an easy solution that looks good and actually adds something to the landscape, generated from the driveway behind it and its collection point. Simply put and very obviously, this one just runs off onto the street.

Other factors requiring drainage thought: water features. Nearly all of my water features have an in-built automatic fill system. Requiring a homeowner to get his hose out and go fill up the daggone pond is sometimes done – if they ask for it. But I have found the auto-fill to be simple and effective and – generally – pain free. But, things happen. If an “auto-fill” is run off the irrigation clock for example, the possibilities for mistakes are fairly numerous. Someone could forget the difference between AM and PM, for example. (Are you listening Mark? ). This meant 12 good solid hours of a 3/4″ pipe’s worth of water streaming into his pond and overflowing. Or, a guy could have the TV set to some compelling ball game and simply forget about that hose he set in the pond to fill it up. So we drain them as well. This is call an “overflow” drain and should be essential in any water feature, form the smallest to the very largest. These can come in straightforward and simple methods, combined with offering surface draining as well:

This one above, taken in early Spring, shows just how effective it was judging by the discoloration of the dried mud on the creek rocks. Below, we have a successfully-hidden drainage point, well-planted with swampy sorts of grasses which offer a congruency with the pond itself. It drains forward – when necessary – and onto a constructed cement drainage ’swale’ that courses down the backs of all these properties nearby:

That about wraps up my drainage spiel. I have some fresh paint on our fence out back I need to get back to watching dry. God, this is a great day! Where’s my beer?  Roovveerrrrr!!  Darn that dog.

Incidentally, here are some shots of the more severe-looking landscape above. The first is from its onset:

The next gives a picture from the neighbor’s perspective and shows in better detail not only the killer view these guys have of Reno, Nevada but also the slope which we built on top of and which we had to somehow protect:

And here’s a few of those pipes I talked about, during construction: