Landscaping & Hardscaping in Federal Way, WA

Federal Way doesn't have an old downtown. That's the key to the yards here. It grew as unincorporated King County suburb along I-5 through the Weyerhaeuser era, boomed between about 1965 and 1985, and only incorporated in 1990. So a large share of the retaining walls, fences and drainage in this city went in under county oversight. Some of it went in under no oversight at all. All of it decades before the current permit counter existed. The typical house is a split-level or a rambler on 8,000 to 12,000 square feet. Wide frontage, attached two-car garage, second-growth Douglas fir still standing from the logging days.

The land is the Des Moines drift plain, a broad glacial upland at 350 to 450 feet. It runs flat to gently rolling across the middle of the city, then falls off hard on the west toward Puget Sound. Dash Point, Adelaide and Lakota Beach get the ravines, the bluff lots and the long stair runs down to the water. Inland you get the kettle lakes. Steel Lake, Mirror Lake, North Lake, Star Lake and Twin Lakes, all closed basins with no natural outlet. The water table sits close to grade around them through the winter. That's why Federal Way runs a serious stormwater utility. It's also why a patio two blocks from Mirror Lake needs a different base than the same patio up in West Campus.

Under the sod it's Alderwood gravelly sandy loam, 18 to 24 inches of it, sitting on till hardpan. On the western shoulder near the Sound the profile turns to Everett and Indianola sand. Loose and fast. In the lake depressions you open a hole and find gray Norma or Bellingham silt loam that smells faintly of sulfur and won't hold compaction. The signature Federal Way excavation is something else, though. It's the 1970s pressure-treated timber or railroad-tie terrace, three or four ties tall, holding a slope behind a rambler, deadmen rotted out fifteen years ago. We pull those out constantly. They get rebuilt in segmental block from Allan Block, Basalite or Mutual Materials, with the drain rock and filter fabric the original never had.

The rest of the work follows from the housing age. Original lawns here were two inches of sandy loam raked over compacted till. They compact. They moss over under the firs. Another bag of seed won't fix that, it takes real renovation. Fence lines built on 4x4 posts in the 1970s snap in a south wind, and the west side of Federal Way takes the full southwest blow off the Sound. Irrigation has a wrinkle worth knowing before you plan a system. Lakehaven Water and Sewer District serves the city, not a city utility. So the irrigation meter and the backflow assembly get permitted through Lakehaven, and the assembly needs an annual test by a certified tester. People are routinely surprised by that step. We handle it as part of the install.

Access is the good news. Streets are wide. Driveways hold a truck and trailer. Most side yards clear a mini excavator without drama, which keeps block walls and boulder work priced sensibly next to a tight urban lot. From the Kent shop it's about 20 minutes down South 272nd or around on SR 18. Close enough that we run Federal Way as a normal route day, and close enough that the wall detail drawn in February is still the wall detail when our own crew sets the base course.