South King County
Landscaping & Hardscaping in Burien, WA
Quick answer
We serve all of Burien, about twenty-five minutes from the Kent shop. Work here splits between flat till uplands around Gregory Heights and Boulevard Park and the Sound bluff at Seahurst and Three Tree Point, where slope, hillside seeps, one-lane roads and Burien tree rules shape what can be built.
- From our Kent shop
- About 25 minutes west via Kent-Des Moines Road and SR 509, or north on I-5 to SR 518; add ten in afternoon traffic.
- ZIP codes served
- 98146, 98166, 98148, 98168
- Licensed in WA
- Bonded & insured
Burien is one of King County's younger cities holding some of its oldest houses. It only incorporated in 1993, and it grew again in 2010 when the southern half of North Highline came in and brought Boulevard Park, Beverly Park and Salmon Creek with it. From the Sound at Seahurst east to Des Moines Memorial Drive and the airport fence is barely four miles, and the character of the work changes about every ten blocks along the way.
Three Tree Point started as a steamer-served summer colony in the 1900s and 1910s. Those cabins got winterized, added onto and remodeled for a century, so it is normal to find a 1912 footprint under a 1978 addition on a lot that falls thirty feet to the beach. Shorewood and Seahurst filled in through the 1950s and 1960s with view houses, a lot of them low, wide, single-story plans where the entire design is pointed at a sightline over the water. Gregory Heights and the ring around Lake Burien are 1940s through 1960s on generous lots with mature canopy. East of First Avenue South the stock gets smaller and denser: wartime and post-war houses on five to seven thousand square foot lots, a higher rental share, and a steady wave of townhome infill since the annexation.
Three Tree Point deserves its own paragraph, because access is the whole job. The roads dropping down from SW 170th are single lane in places, blind on the curves, with no shoulder, no turnaround at the bottom and neighbors parked along both sides. A ten-wheeler of drain rock is not going down there. We break loads into a small dump trailer, stage material where a homeowner actually has room, and price the shuttling honestly at the walkthrough instead of discovering it on day one. The slope below those lots does what Sound bluffs do, which here shows up as springs breaking out of the hillside in midwinter at a fairly consistent elevation, often in the same spot every year. Cutting into that face, or collecting roof and patio water and letting it run over the lip, changes the slope before it changes the yard, so a geotechnical engineer belongs in that conversation ahead of us. Mapped landslide and erosion hazard covers much of the shoreline plus the Miller, Salmon and Walker Creek ravines.
Burien also cares more about its trees than most cities we work in, and the tree code changes how a patio gets designed. On a lot where the best patio location happens to be occupied by a fifty-year-old Douglas fir, the design conversation comes before the permit conversation. Usually we build around it. Keep the compacted base outside the critical root zone, hand-dig where roots are structural instead of cutting them with a machine, float a section on a thicker rock lift rather than trenching a footing across a root plate, and choose a paver pattern that tolerates a little future movement. Sometimes removing the tree is genuinely the right call. It should be a decision made with the city, not a surprise on a Tuesday.
East of the ridge the ground is plain Alderwood till over hardpan and the requests get practical: cedar privacy fencing between close neighbors, sod that will actually root, and a front yard that stops consuming Saturdays. Planting on the west side is a dry-shade problem rather than a sun problem, because those lots are canopied with mature fir and maple, so we lean on sword fern, salal, evergreen huckleberry, rhododendron and vine maple with hydrangea where a gap in the canopy allows it. One utility note worth knowing before you plan irrigation: Highline Water District serves most of Burien while King County Water District 20 covers the north end around Boulevard Park and Beverly Park, and which one you are on determines where the irrigation meter application and the annual backflow test paperwork go. We handle that as part of the install. The design work is ours and so is the install crew, which on a site with no room for a second contractor truck is more than a talking point. Licensed and bonded in Washington under BLUELLS880K2 since 2012.
Ground conditions in Burien
Most of Burien is a flat to gently rolling Vashon till upland, Alderwood gravelly sandy loam over a dense hardpan layer, which perches winter water and sends it sideways instead of down. The west edge is a different animal. From Seahurst south through Three Tree Point the ground falls off to Puget Sound as a marine bluff with springs and seeps breaking out partway down the face, and landslide and erosion hazard is mapped along most of that shoreline. Three ravines cut inland with the same problem: Miller Creek, Salmon Creek and Walker Creek all carry steep slopes plus stream buffers. Older shoreline lots frequently contain undocumented fill, remnant bulkhead material and beach-cabin era debris. Two constraints price a Burien job more than the block choice does. Access, because the lanes at Three Tree Point and parts of Shorewood will not accept a full-size truck. And trees, because heavy mature fir and maple canopy sits exactly where people want patios, and both the roots and the city tree code have to be designed around.
Permits
Permitting goes through City of Burien Community Development. Retaining walls over 4 feet measured from the bottom of the footing to the top of the wall require a building permit and stamped structural engineering, and a shorter wall can be pulled in when it is tiered or carries a surcharge from a driveway or structure above. Burien regulates critical areas, so work inside mapped geologic hazard areas along the Sound bluff and the creek ravines, or inside a wetland or stream buffer on Miller, Salmon or Walker Creek, typically needs a geotechnical or critical areas report on top of the structural work. Property within 200 feet of the ordinary high water mark of Puget Sound falls under the Shoreline Master Program, where even modest grading can require a shoreline exemption and a longer timeline. Burien also regulates significant tree removal with replacement obligations, which is a real consideration on the heavily canopied west side and is worth a call to the permit counter before any large fir comes down. Adding hard surface past the adopted drainage review threshold can trigger stormwater review under the King County Surface Water Design Manual. These rules get amended, so we verify the applicable thresholds with the city at permit time.
Neighborhoods we work in
- Three Tree Point
- Seahurst
- Gregory Heights
- Lake Burien
- Shorewood
- Olde Burien
- Boulevard Park
Services we offer in Burien
Burien: common questions
Can you actually get equipment down to Three Tree Point?
Yes, with a plan and an honest number attached to it. Those lanes are one vehicle wide in places, with blind curves, parked cars and nowhere to turn around at the bottom, so large delivery trucks are off the table. We shuttle material in a small dump trailer, stage where the property or a cooperative neighbor gives us room, and use a compact machine or hand-carry for the tight side yards. It adds labor hours and we show that in the estimate rather than burying it. Kent to Three Tree Point runs about twenty-five minutes, so getting to the neighborhood is never the constraint. Getting down the hill is.
Do I need a permit to remove a tree so I can build a patio?
Possibly. Burien regulates removal of significant trees and can require replacement planting, and the west side of the city is exactly where large mature firs and maples sit. Our first move is usually to redesign around the tree instead: shift the patio outside the critical root zone, hand-excavate near structural roots, and build a floating base rather than trenching a footing across the root plate. If removal really is the right answer, we check the requirement with the city before anything gets cut.
Do I need engineering for a retaining wall on a Seahurst bluff lot?
Almost certainly, and often more than structural engineering alone. Anything over 4 feet from footing to top needs a permit with a stamped design anywhere in the city. On the mapped landslide and erosion hazard ground above the Sound, or in the Miller and Salmon Creek ravines, a geotechnical report is generally required as well, because the governing failure mode is the slope rather than the wall. We look the parcel up on the critical areas map before quoting so the scope and the schedule are real.
Who handles the irrigation meter and the backflow test in Burien?
It depends on your side of the city. Highline Water District serves most of Burien and King County Water District 20 covers the north end around Boulevard Park and Beverly Park, and the meter application, cross-connection paperwork and annual backflow test all go through whichever one serves your address rather than through City Hall. Washington requires a backflow assembly on any irrigation system tied to potable water, tested by a certified tester after installation and every year after that. We install to district spec and coordinate the first test.
What will grow under the big firs on the west side?
Dry shade is the real condition on most Seahurst, Shorewood and Three Tree Point lots, not sun. Sword fern, salal and evergreen huckleberry handle the root competition and the low light without needing constant water once established. Rhododendron gives you flower and evergreen mass. Vine maple works well at the canopy edge, and hydrangea does fine where a gap lets some light through. Lawn under a mature fir is a losing fight, and we say so rather than selling sod that will thin out by August.