A neighbour perpetually ran a pump in an effort to preserve his garden from the ocean's onslaught.
"That can't possibly work," says Marcyn Ward, of Down to Earth Landscapes. "Yet it's the way most people think. They think that they're able to pump and put things in pipes and defeat the power of the ocean."
For the last 30 years, the company has worked with the architectural design of private gardens. When they were called to rid the tidal waters from the island home's yard, they responded with a series of swales and berms, contouring the land to control the flow of ground and surface water.
Rather than ridding the yard of water, the company's workers modified the yard to include a stream that carried surface water past decorative stones.
"There's a much broader way of looking at landscape and looking for miles around you
and seeing how you sit in the landscape, how you sit in terms of elevation," explains Ward. "We allow water to move as it naturally does through the sub-grade and we build the land on top of that high-water mark."
Some garden problems may be related to irrigation, according to Ward.
"Some very experienced landscape architects are actually quite challenged with controlling site water. Often you'll see many, many very expensive gardens that are soggy on the surface."
If water sits on top of a lawn, many gardeners make the mistake of aerating and adding sand to dry the surface. They usually achieve the opposite effect, says Ward.
"They've built little holes full of sand, and water always moves to the area of least resistance."
Specializing in high-end residential landscape design and maintenance, the North Vancouver company places an emphasis on examining each site in the context of its geography.
"You can't fight your site conditions," says Ward. "You either have to change them or work with them, and working with them is much smarter."
Consulting an expert before any major work can save backyard gardeners from shoddy lawns, rotten roots and heartache, according to Ward.
"We rip out gardens all the time done by people who didn't carefully consider what's happening underground and with the environment around them."
Other considerations, such as the shade cast by your own home and nearby trees and architecture, should also be considered in terms of the plants you'd like to grow, according to Ward.
Most shade plants will survive in filtered light but not full sun,she says.
While many landscapers can be skilled at manicuring trees and lawns, they often fail to consider what's happening below the surface, according to Ward.
"Generally, about 80 per cent of the work we do is below ground," she says.
"The actual planting, lawn, and irrigation system, etcetera, is just the icing on the cake. Many companies just focus on the icing on the cake, but really good quality landscape starts
from way down."
While some landscaping problems necessitate clever solutions, sandy, indigenous soils are "the easiest thing in the world," to work with, according to Ward.
"Organics and the fine particulate matter in organic soils will always migrate, with rain and time, down through sand," she says.
