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Moss & Meadow
Layered green foliage filling the frame

Selected work

Six gardens
and why they look that way

Every one of these is a real set of constraints — a septic field, a nine-foot side yard, sixty-year firs that refuse to share water. The plant list is the answer; the paragraph is the reasoning.

A soft path running between tall straight conifers in deep green shade
01 Candalaria, Salem · 2023

The Candalaria Shade Walk

Dry shade under sixty-year Douglas firs, where three previous lawns had failed.

The clients wanted lawn. The firs had already said no twice. Instead we cut a soft gravel walk on the natural desire line between the back door and the studio, then planted the whole floor in things that expect low light and root competition. The path is 42 inches — wide enough for two, narrow enough that the ferns brush your knees by July.

Plant palette

Polystichum munitum
Sword fern — the backbone, 60 of them
Rhododendron 'Cynthia'
Two mature, moved from the front bed
Hosta 'Halcyon'
Blue-grey, holds colour in deep shade
Vancouveria hexandra
Inside-out flower, our native ground cover
Mahonia nervosa
Low Oregon grape at the path edges

No irrigation past year two. It has not been watered since.

Raised timber beds planted with leafy greens and herbs in a sunny back garden
02 Keizer · 2024

A Kitchen Garden in Keizer

A flat, full-sun back lot that grew nothing but ryegrass and blackberry.

Four cedar beds at 20 inches — high enough to garden without kneeling, which was the actual brief. We ran them north–south so nothing shades its neighbour, set a herb spiral at the junction of the paths, and espaliered two pears against the south fence where the heat collects. Paths are compacted quarter-minus so a wheelbarrow tracks straight through them in February.

Plant palette

Pyrus 'Comice' / 'Bartlett'
Espaliered, four-tier horizontal cordon
Rosmarinus 'Tuscan Blue'
Anchor of the herb spiral
Thymus, Origanum, Salvia
The dry top third of the spiral
Fragaria 'Hood'
Edging the two south beds
Phacelia tanacetifolia
Sown in the fallow bed for the bees

Drip on a two-zone timer. Roughly nine minutes a day, June to September.

A summer meadow of red poppies and seed heads catching low golden light
03 South Salem · 2022

Meadow at Croisan Creek

Half an acre of thirsty lawn sitting over a septic drain field.

Nothing with a deep root could go here, and the client was mowing two hours a week to keep it looking like an obligation. We stripped the sod, sheet-composted through one winter, then drilled a shallow-rooted valley meadow mix in October so the rains did the germinating. It is cut once, in late August, after the seed has dropped.

Plant palette

Camassia quamash
Common camas — a blue April, 900 bulbs
Eriophyllum lanatum
Oregon sunshine, carries May into July
Achillea millefolium
Yarrow, white and the soft rust selection
Festuca roemeri
Roemer's fescue, the matrix grass
Papaver rhoeas
Field poppy, sown for the first two summers

Mowing dropped from two hours a week to one afternoon a year.

A house at dusk with warm windows, a broad lawn and a mature tree
04 Fairmount Hill, Salem · 2024

The Evening Terrace

A west-facing slope with a view the family never actually used.

A 900-square-foot bluestone terrace cut into the grade, held by a dry-laid basalt wall so nothing needed a footing or an engineer. We kept the single Oregon white oak and built the whole geometry around its drip line. Planting is deliberately quiet and pale — everything here is chosen to still be visible at nine in the evening, which is when this garden is used.

Plant palette

Quercus garryana
The existing oak — protected root zone, no fill
Nicotiana sylvestris
White, scented, and luminous after dusk
Calamagrostis 'Karl Foerster'
Vertical, catches the last light
Hydrangea 'Annabelle'
Big white heads along the wall foot
Stachys byzantina
Silver, spilling over the terrace edge

Dry-laid basalt, hand-set. Three courses, no mortar, no permit needed.

A narrow raised walkway running between dense ferns and green planting
05 West Salem · 2021

Fern Court

A nine-foot side yard that was storing bins and losing water to the foundation.

Side yards are usually written off. This one is now the best fifteen seconds of walking on the property. We re-graded away from the house, put a French drain under a bark path, and planted both walls of the corridor so it reads as depth rather than width. A single uplight at the far end makes it look twice as long from the kitchen window.

Plant palette

Blechnum spicant
Deer fern, evergreen, tolerates the wet foot
Gaultheria shallon
Salal — glossy, native, unkillable
Asarum caudatum
Wild ginger carpeting the path edges
Acer circinatum
Vine maple, one multi-stem at the turn
Tiarella trifoliata
Foamflower, for the white spring haze

Foundation moisture readings dropped by half over the first wet season.

A long gravel path edged with clipped hedging and flowering shrubs
06 Turner · 2023

The Rose Walk

An inherited formal garden, overgrown, that the new owners did not want to lose.

Restoration rather than design. We found the original 1950s axis under twenty years of laurel, took the hedges back hard over two seasons, and replanted the borders with disease-resistant roses that will not need spraying. The gravel is the same local quarry the first owners used — we matched it from a sample dug out beneath the old path.

Plant palette

Rosa 'Munstead Wood'
Deep crimson, strongly scented, no blackspot
Rosa 'Wollerton Old Hall'
Pale, repeat-flowering, along the west run
Buxus sempervirens
The surviving original edging, cut back hard
Nepeta 'Six Hills Giant'
Softening every hard corner
Alchemilla mollis
Lady's mantle, spilling onto the gravel

Two seasons of restorative pruning. Nothing mature was removed.

How one gets made

From walk-through
to fifth spring.

  1. 01

    Walk-through

    One free hour on site. Light, drainage, soil probe, and an honest read on what the ground will support.

  2. 02

    Drawings

    A measured plan and planting palette inside four weeks, plus a fixed build quote you can hold us to.

  3. 03

    Build

    Our own crew. Grading and drainage first, then hardscape, then soil, then plants — in that order, always.

  4. 04

    Settling in

    We come back at three months and again at a year. Most clients roll into a seasonal care plan from there.

Book a walk-through (503) 555-0148