Owens Landscape Group

I have related my story in detail in a previous report.

I asked for a guarantee for the work (too late) when I was given the bill. I was stunned that the materials--which the company installed--were guaranteed for ONLY 30 days. There were three expensive, dead trees in 60 to 90 days. With closer inspection it was clear that areas were over-mulched--mulch was spread onto actively growing pasture grass and not well-placed for protection of the planting--so, the mulch expense was largely a waste. Most large plants and trees were difficult to water (the water ran off the planting) due to insufficient site preparation and backfill with more absorbent soil. Some shrubs were placed in holes with no additional soil to seal the roots. I wish to update this review because the folks at Owens agreed to extend the warranty and replaced plants that had perished quickly. I am happy to report that all plants originally installed and replaced have survived the year and are healthy.

I judge a company primarily by how problems are resolved because, life as it is, there will always be problems. I hired Owens hoping they could be my one stop company for all my landscaping needs. That didn't work out primarily because I want a very careful and meticulous team and each team I had out to my home did not complete the full terms of the contract. Therefore I terminated this service. I also used the irrigation service to assess an existing system, make repairs, and add additional features. There have been numerous problems. The reason I don't give a worse grade at this time is that there are a lot of folks in this company and there are several shining stars. Unfortunately the shining stars aren't the folks who have come out to do the actual work and I think another big problem with this company is an unrealistic idea about the time needed to do a superb job. I am especially impressed with the owner, Mr Billy Owens, the floral designer and supervisor of maintenance, Ms Nancy Simmons, the receptionist (whose name, I'm sorry to say escapes me). A few of the bidders also impressed me. All of these people seem to have a high standard for the job, are very responsive about returning calls, seem to want the customer to be treated well, fairly, and to be satisfied and take feedbak well. What I suspect is that this company has grown a bit too fast, doesn't have the best workers actually on the job, and as stated before is unrealistic and delegating too much work to their people in the field. I think it is possible for the difficulties I have had to be resolved well, and even at some point to have a more problem free interaction with them in the future but I will be sure that it will be a very speciic time limited job, such as an installation of flowers, and I will be watching carefully. I think this is a young company with some very promising personnel and they just need to find excellent crews and give them realistic amounts of work. I will be coming back to revise my opinions as the issues still remaining to be resolved are completed.

The job started off okay, but weather factors delayed the commencement of the project. Once the work finally began, deadlines were missed early on and were never adequately explained. There were multiple issues with subcontractors that resulted in substandard work being performed. The subs refused to work with Owens once they arrived due to a breakdown in negotiations over cost, so Owens attempted to perform the work on their own and pass it off as professionally done. The work was far below average. When we brought this to the attention of the project managers, they assured us that corrections would be made, but they never were. Days and weeks would go by where we saw no changes being made, despite perfect weather. What was supposed to be a two week process began in early February and ended in late May. Ultimately, we grew tired of the missed deadlines, subpar work, lack of responsiveness and incompetence displayed by the project managers and complained to our landscape architects. The architects surveyed the work and were genuinely shocked, stating that they had never seen Owens perform so poorly. Even the appeals made on our behalf by our landscape architects were met with a less than adequate response and it became painfully clear that Owens was simply in over their heads. Not to mention the fact that the subcontractors came to our home on several occasions requesting direct payment, though our agreement was with Owens. This suggested that the relationship between Owens and the subs was deteriorating as well. Things were so tense at one point that we discontinued all direct communication with Owens and their subs and deferred to our landscape architects for any correspondence. Finally, the owners became involved and were expecting us to be extremely irate, which we were well within our right to be. However, we were very reasonable offering them yet another chance to correct the situation. One of the owners assured me that he would come back to the house personally to deliver on his promise of delivering the job that we expected. I'm sad to report that he never did. I am not surprised, however. I don't understand how a landscape company can act so brazenly disinterested in a customer that is spending $20,000 with plans to complete phase two and spend several thousand more. Our landscape architects remained appalled at both the quality of the work and the attitude of the representatives throughout the process. They have vowed to never work with them again and sadly, I must agree. Do not engage Owens for your landscape needs.