Landscaping & Hardscaping in Federal Way, WA

Federal Way does not have an old downtown, and that is the key to understanding 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. A large share of the retaining walls, fences and drainage in this city therefore went in under county oversight, or under no oversight at all, 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 with a wide frontage, an attached two-car garage, and second-growth Douglas fir left standing from the logging days.

The land itself is the Des Moines drift plain, a broad glacial upland at 350 to 450 feet that runs flat to gently rolling across the middle of the city and then falls off hard on the west toward Puget Sound. Dash Point, Adelaide and Lakota Beach get ravines, bluff lots and 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. Water table sits close to grade around them through the winter. That is why Federal Way runs a serious stormwater utility, and it is why a patio two blocks from Mirror Lake needs a different base than the same patio up in West Campus.

Under the sod it is 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 will not hold compaction. The signature Federal Way excavation, though, is the 1970s pressure-treated timber or railroad-tie terrace, three or four ties tall, holding a slope behind a rambler with deadmen that rotted out fifteen years ago. We pull those out constantly and replace them with 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, so they compact, moss over under the firs and need real renovation rather than another bag of seed. 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, and we handle it as part of the install.

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