Arcadia Landscape Design

He has been my gardener before. He does very good work on everything. He does phenomenal work and would recommend him to anybody. With his help I have a beautiful garden that I am very proud of each day.

Horrible from day one. They cheated me on materials, workmanship, products, and I've had to slowly redo most of their work. Never hire them again. Several of my new contractors have been busy redoing their work! Stay away and find someone else, Scott Goodman and his crew are cheats and liers.

I cannot stress enough to others NOT to use this company. I actually joined Angie's List just to post a warning. My job took over a year to complete, and even then, I was forced to write them off and hire someone else to finish what they didn't complete. Long story short, the owner, Scott Goodman, made a great first impression. He came over a few times to discover what we were looking for in a backyard remodel. He did not charge to create a design, and he put a lot of thought into it. This is the one good thing about Scott's company - he does have taste, and the design of our pool and hardscape is very nice, and something which we have received compliments on. The company was great, initially. They worked five or six days a week. The demo was done, and the pool broke ground. But after a few months, everything came to an abrupt slowdown. I could not get the project manager on the telephone, and the lack of communication was frustrating to no end. The owner began to retreat, and I could not even get him to answer simple questions as to when our job would be completed. I could go on for a very long time about every single little thing that was done poorly. Promises were made and broken all the time. I had to practically beg them to come back to finish up the huge list of things that were left half-done. The lighting was placed with no purpose whatsoever. The actual landscaping was installed like this: it was dropped off by the nursery, and left there. It would have all died if I didn't hand water it all, since no one would come out to install it. Finally, when someone did come, my wife and I had to tell them where to plant it, because the laborers had no design knowledge! Since we know nothing about this kind of stuff, a lot was unhealthy and died off. Scott also made up every excuse in the book, until finally letting me know that his company was faltering in the economic downturn. I made a HUGE mistake, and had been paying him before things were done. I will never do that again. Because I had already paid him a major portion of the fee, there was nothing to hold over him to finish the job. To top it off, he had thrown in a $3800 barbecue as an incentive for us to sign with him, and of course, that BBQ sat there unfinished for almost an entire year, because he couldn't afford to pick up the BBQ. As if it couldn't be worse, a representative from a bank called me to say he was trying to help the guy restructure and pay off his debts. An idea was floated that if I could come up with that money to buy the BBQ myself, then he would pay me back in monthly installments. Feeling though I now had no choice, since the entire BBQ island was built to those exact dimensions of the expensive BBQ, I paid for it, and got a promissory note from him. Which he then didn't honor! I had to threaten to sue him for him to stand up, be a man and fulfill his obligations. So, even now, well over 15 months after he started the job, he still owes me $1500.00. And I will not give up until he has paid me back. Because, like I said, I ended up having to have another company (Canterbury Landscaping, which I now wholeheartedly recommend) do the landscaping the way it should have been done. They also had to change out the cheap lighting that Arcadia put in, cutting corners, and re-do some of the irrigation system, since Arcadia mixed up the valves, meaning that the sprinkler timers were all over the place. Grass and beds on the same timer, etc. What a mess! It's only now that I can look back and not get enraged. Live and learn. But if I can steer anyone away from this horribly-managed company, I feel like I've done something. RUN AWAY! I know there are tons of nightmare contractor stories out there, but this one ranks up there pretty high.