Terry W.
01/11/2021 12:00:00 SA
The short version is that I cannot recommend them. The longer version is pretty long, but I'll try to control it.
Initially their service was thorough. Yes, they missed some things, but they would get them the next visit. But that's as good as it got. There were at least two crew shake-ups in the ~8 months we used them, and each time the service declined. Their original crew was definitely the best, but that only lasted about 2 months.
What they did, they did well. Trimming and shaping bushes, edging ground cover (usually), cutting low-hanging branches. Though sometimes you had to TELL them to do it. They didn't seem to recognize what needed to be done, even after walking the property and building into the contract the agreed upon requirements. If you didn't instruct them ahead of time it may or may not be accomplished. And even if you did tell them (e.g. please get that weed/plant in the rose bush) it wasn't a guarantee they would actually do it. I tried sending them photos, I tried making lists (which was the most successful approach, but ironically they asked me to stop with the lists). But even they acknowledged that several things I was complaining about should have been automatic; I shouldn't have had to say anything, it just should have been done. The management/supervisors agreed with me! But often it wasn't automatic.
About the only thing that was consistent was they used to blowers to clean debris from the yard. Sometimes it seemed that was all they did.
They didn't remove dead plants that were obviously dead even after I pointed them out. They missed obvious weeds. On more than one occasion they cut a dripper which I then had to fix when I discovered I had a fountain instead of a drip head (they would have fixed it if I waited long enough, but I wasn't willing to have my system off for several days until someone could drop by). They would stop edging the ground cover part-way through (i.e. you could see where they stopped). Management agreed with me that was unacceptable.
As I said before, they handled specific repairs very well. They weren't cheap, but the pricing was reasonable. They even reduced the pricing once because the job wasn't as hard as I expected. So bonus points for that.
I think if you have a conventional lawn, and some trees and shrubs, you'll probably be fine. If you have anything out of the ordinary they don't seem to know what to do, or at least the crews that do the actual work don't. I was paying a lot of money for incomplete work.
They got tired of my complaints about the time I got tired of complaining. They fired me first, but I was about to do the same to them. I was going to grant one last chance, mostly because I didn't want to have to find someone else. Interviewing landscapers is a pain. Just in time for the ground cover to need to be cut back...
