Whole-Property Landscape Design
Drainage decides everything
The unglamorous half of the budget, and the half that is still right in ten years.
Drainage is the single most consequential system in a landscape and the one homeowners think about least. Almost every hardscape failure we are called to look at is a water failure: paving that heaved, a wall that bowed, a patio pushing water at a foundation, a bed that drowns every winter. The surface gets blamed; where the water goes is the cause.
Southern California drains twice a year and it matters both times
A climate that is dry for most of the year lulls people into treating drainage as optional, and then delivers the entire winter total in a handful of storms. A system designed for the average is designed for a condition that never occurs.
On clay soils in parts of Simi Valley and on decomposed granite slopes elsewhere in the county, the same rainfall behaves completely differently, which is why this is a site question rather than a specification question.
Where water leaves is as designed as where it arrives
Every hard surface added to a property is rainfall that used to soak in and now runs somewhere. Doing that without deciding where is how a neighbor inherits your patio, or how a retaining wall ends up holding back saturated soil it was not designed for.
Retaining walls are drainage structures with a decorative face
A wall holding back wet soil is holding several times the load it was designed for, and the drainage behind it is what prevents that. Gravel backfill, a drain line and an outlet are not optional extras on a retaining wall; they are most of what makes it a wall rather than a stack.
Irrigation is the same system from the other end
Water applied on purpose has to leave the same way water that fell from the sky does. An irrigation plan and a drainage plan that were drawn by different people, or by nobody, produce a garden that is simultaneously over-watered and badly drained.
Questions people actually ask
Can drainage be fixed after the fact?
Often, because drainage problems are grade problems and grade can be rebuilt. It costs more than doing it first and usually means lifting a surface somebody has already paid for.
Is a French drain the answer?
Sometimes, and it is also the thing most often installed instead of a diagnosis. A drain with nowhere to discharge to is a trench that fills up, and that is a common and expensive way to spend money on the symptom.
How much of a budget should drainage be?
More than most people expect and less than a failure costs. We will not give a percentage without seeing the site, because a flat lot on sand and a hillside on clay are not the same project.
The rest of the guide
Whole-Property Landscape Design, one question per page.
- Whole-Property Landscape Design: the complete guideThe hub page: what it is, the sequence, and what one company changes.
- The order of the workNot a scheduling preference. Every stage decides where water goes for the one after it.
- Four contractors, and the seamsThe normal way a property gets built, and the specific places it comes apart.
- Services before concreteThe cheapest decisions on the whole project, and the ones most often skipped.
- The pool inside the planThe shell is rarely the problem. Where it sits almost always is.
- Phasing a whole propertyAlmost nobody does it all at once. Doing it in the right order is what makes that cheap instead of expensive.
- What a 3D model settlesChanges on screen cost an afternoon. The same change after a footing is poured costs a demolition.
- One scope, one priceSix quotes for one property are usually six different projects, which is why they cannot be compared.
- The handoverA landscape is a system somebody has to run after we leave. Being told how is part of the work.
- Where this falls shortThe page most companies in our position do not write.
Tell us about the property
Send a few lines about what you have and what you want. We will tell you what we think it takes, what order it should happen in, and whether we are the right company for it.