Landscape designer in Katy

Inside the City of Katy, permits are required for driveways, sidewalks, patios, accessory structures such as carports and storage buildings, pools and lawn irrigation systems. In unincorporated Fort Bend County, which covers most of Cinco Ranch, the county engineer's office requires a development permit for regrading, drainage changes and work in the 100-year floodplain, and a residential permit for a new structure or addition of 400 square feet or more. Driveways there need their own permit.

Harris County parts of greater Katy follow Harris County rules, where patios and carports need a permit and fill cannot send runoff onto a neighbor. We handle whichever applies, and plan the schedule around review.

Katy sits upstream of Barker and Addicks reservoirs, built by the Army Corps of Engineers in the 1940s to protect downtown Houston from Buffalo Bayou floods. During Harvey, water backed up behind the dams, and the Corps later settled a lawsuit over roughly 10,000 upstream properties. The Willow Fork of Buffalo Bayou runs from the City of Katy through Cinco Ranch into Barker Reservoir, and its drainage district has been desilting the channel.

Most yard problems are smaller and local: flat lots, slow soil and roof water dumped at the slab. Yard drainage solutions, surface water drainage and downspout rerouting move water to the street before it pools.

The Katy soil series has its type location in Fort Bend County: a fine sandy loam over clay loam with a seasonal perched water table 5 to 30 inches down, on flats with almost no slope. Heavy Lake Charles clay is also typed in Fort Bend County. Either way, water drains slowly and has little grade to follow.

The ground is also sinking. A University of Houston study reported Katy settling about 2 centimeters a year, and the subsidence district notes that sinking land changes drainage patterns. A yard that drained when the house was built may not today. We shoot grades on site before designing French drain installation or lawn grading and leveling work.

Cinco Ranch is split among 19 utility districts that provide water, wastewater and drainage, with two homeowner associations divided by Katy-Gaston Road. The eastern association runs a modification application process with posted deadlines, so we build the submittal into the schedule. Many newer communities in the area, including Cross Creek Ranch in Fulshear, have similar review.

Katy requests usually start with water and end with outdoor living: a backyard that finally drains, a driveway that stops sending water toward the garage, and a patio and cover for the family to use. All of it goes through our landscape design process and one crew.

• Drainage reset for lots that have settled
• Paver patios and walks on compacted base
• Driveways permitted by the city or county
• HOA submittals for Cinco Ranch and nearby communities