Urban Landscape, Native Landscape: fountains

Friday, April 5, 2013

Friday, June 4, 2010

Harbor Steps

The Harbor Steps April 2010

The Harbor Steps in Downtown Seattle is a broad flight of stairs that span the width of University Street between 1st Avenue & Western Avenue. The planting design is spare & uninspired. But the hardscape (a series of steps, terraces & expansive water features that qualify as both fountains & waterfalls) is quite nice. Restaurants & shops line the steps. There are many places to sit, some with shade from trees. The land is too steep here to accommodate a street with vehicular traffic. Before the Harbor Steps were built, there was a fence across a high retaining wall & a narrow staircase. The Harbor Steps are a very pleasant way to move from Downtown to the Waterfront. They are directly across from the Seattle Art Museum, very near Benaroya Hall & the Garden of Remembrance, close to the Pike Place Market. Post Alley connects to the Harbor Steps at their center.

About This Blog

This blog began in 2008 as Metropolitan Gardens to provide information on gardening in Seattle & places like it. Click on Gardening in Cascadia. The blog expanded to include Parks P-Patches Public Gardens in the US, Canada & Europe. Then Nature was added. (The difference between nature & gardens is intent. Nature happens. Gardens are planned.) Many recent posts are not about Seattle, or even Cascadia. They are Urban Landscape: streetscape & architecture. Cascadia is the region including the Cascade Mountains of Washington & Oregon. If you want to contact the blogger, leave a message in comments. Comments are moderated & private messages will not be posted.

Our Land & Climate

The city of Seattle rests between 2 bodies of water: Puget Sound & Lake Washington. Puget Sound is a substantial part of the Salish Sea & a very small part of the Pacific Ocean. The Salish Sea is set apart from the Pacific by the Olympic Peninsula in the state of Washington & Vancouver Island in the province of British Columbia. The dense, wet clouds of the Pacific Ocean travel as far as the Cascade Mountains, near the Salish Sea & not very far from the ocean. East of the Cascades lies the desert of the Columbia Basin. The moist, temperate climate of Seattle extends south to northern California & north to southeastern Alaska. The Pacific Northwest Coast from San Francisco Bay to Cook Inlet shares a flora dominated by evergreen coniferous forest. The central portion, west of the Cascade Mountains, is called Cascadia. The climate is cool & wet from fall to spring, warm & dry in summer. The Olympic Mountains block Seattle from much of the Pacific rainfall. Seattle is drier than the Atlantic coast of North America & northern Europe, cooler in summer & warmer in winter. It lies near the latitude of Paris & Quebec City.