All Posts

By Joshua Tripp, Landscape Architect, ASLA — Last updated: August 2026 Most articles answering this question are written by people selling one of the two services, which is why they all reach the same conclusion: hire the author. Here is the more useful answer, from someone who has spent a career on the licensed side of the line and who regularly tells prospective clients they do not need us. For most residential yards in the Inland Northwest, you do not need a landscape arch

By Joshua Tripp, Landscape Architect, ASLA Last updated: August 2026 People move to Spokane expecting Pacific Northwest green and get a semi-arid steppe climate sitting on top of basalt bedrock instead. That mismatch between expectation and reality is the single biggest reason landscape projects in this city go sideways — homeowners design around a Seattle mental model and then fight their own site for three years. From our Spokane office at 125 S Stevens St, this is the site

By Joshua Tripp, Landscape Architect, ASLA Last updated: July 2026 Drive the grade from downtown Coeur d'Alene up toward Canfield Mountain or the ridges above Hayden Lake and you can watch landscaping fail in real time: bluegrass lawns burning out on south-facing slopes, ornamental beds shredded by deer, retaining walls leaning after two freeze-thaw winters. Most of it was installed by competent crews. It fails anyway, because it was designed for a Spokane-suburb lot and inst

By Joshua Tripp, Landscape Architect, ASLA Last updated: July 2026 Most homeowners in Bonner and Kootenai counties make the same mistake at the nursery: they pick what looks good in a container in May — ornamental grasses from Oregon, landscape roses bred for the Midwest, non-native shrubs that wilt the first August they skip a watering. Six months later, those plants are either dead or demanding attention every week. The plants that actually belong here — the ones that grew

By Joshua Tripp, Landscape Architect, ASLA — PLACE Landscape Architecture Last updated: July 2026 If you own — or are about to buy — lakefront property in Sandpoint, here is the single most useful thing a landscape architect can tell you: on Lake Pend Oreille, the permit map is the site plan. Wetland boundaries, shoreline setbacks, and encroachment jurisdiction decide where the house sits, where the path to the water goes, what the shoreline looks like, and what your dock can