ARTSCAPES-LANDSCAPE DESIGN

Scott and his team were AWESOME. I can't say enough about his construction team: Mario, Angel and Daniel. They were on time everyday, never missed a day, worked through the rain and seemed to enjoy the whole process (be ready for Angel's singing!). I work from home and watched the entire process. The best part was Scott committed to starting in early Dec and finish the project by early February which we honestly didn't expect him to meet given El Nino and typical contractor lack of follow through. It is now early February and we are DONE! His guys worked every weekday except Christmas Eve, Christmas and New Years Day. It looks amazing and Scott actively met with us throughout the entire process. He offered his input and advise when we weren't sure of a certain stone color, granite finish or location of various elements (bar, fire pit, etc). It wasn't cheap, and that's the only reason I didn't give Scott an "A" on price, but that said we mutually agreed on the many change requests and can't be happier with the result (we ended up over budget by 20%). We've done plenty of home improvements including kitchens & bathrooms and this was the smoothest and fastest project we've ever done, by far. I HIGHLY recommend Scott and Artscapes if you have a landscaping remodel. You'll love Bella too (I'll keep that one a secret for now). Great job guys.

I had a very bad experience working with Artscapes on a large backyard remodel project. Much of the hardscaping was not built to code or as described on the plans, resulting in major problems with the building requiring a lot of re-work. Overall a disaster, having spent 6 months+ working on this we're largely back to the drawing board. Additionally, Scott would not provide support for pricing when we knew we were getting over charged on plants (and caught him buying plants at Home Depot and charging a crazy markup despite representing plants only coming from nice nurseries). Multiple landscapers have since said it was one of the worst jobs they had ever seen...Crew was not as skilled as represented. Scott was very difficult to work with in our experience, both my wife and I found it very challenging. We had an indoor remodel done, and a pool remodel and we had no issues w/them...We have spoken to a number of happy and unhappy clients, appears he does some work that people are happy with (though also has a bunch of very unhappy clients so we're not alone. At one point along the way as we were nearing completion of the patio (which again have severe building failures) he said something very telling and quot;I can't wait to get to the waterfall, that's the fun/creative part, I don't really like the building phaseand quot;. Unfortunately was too late. He also didn't get a lot of areas on the project inspected that were supposed to be inspected prior to completion (BBQ, arch, etc). Artscapes built a step under an overhang way too low relative to code which I cut my head on and got a concussion quickly learning why that building code exists. Even after seeing the injury his initial plan was to just hide it so the inspectors hopefully wouldn't see (and quot;if we take them through the back gate maybe they won't noticeand quot;), after a lot of pushing finally agreed to modify though we then realized there were bigger problems with that patio....The building problems on our project were bad, as was complete lack of focus on drainage and gouging on plant pricing. So yeah, my advice is to be very careful, could work out, could be a disaster if like my experience... Rather than owning up to the full extent of the problems, he tried to throw a bandaid on one problem at the end (though from talking to him in the town's office, was clear he didn't understand how to solve it, so have refused to let him do it and am forced to seek recovery via legal paths. My attorney suggests it may be more helpful to my own case to not post reviews, though honestly I feel a moral obligation given the problems we had). While not directly related to our job, I believe his online marketing practices are suspect also....He admits to lying about location of certain jobs in his portfolio to attract google hits (eg lists his own water feature in his backyard as a client from palo alto to get google hits when someone in PA is looking for landscape designer...problem is it actually matters where a contractor has done work given different local regulations, knowledge of town process, etc, areas where he really struggled on our project). Have also found that he sends happy clients emails w/suggested text for online reviews. Also the initial pictures on his yelp reviews were not posted by the actual owner of the home (and 15 of 18 were filtered out by the fraud filter). ~75% of his google reviews came in the same month period which coincided w/the problems we were having w/him, an odd pattern for a business around for 15 years in the bay area. Also he markets his own home remodel on his website and to propsective clients, however there are no permits for the work that was done on the public database (many former clients note he pushes to do work unpermitted - under no circumstances would I recommend this w/Artscapes - it was actually the town planner who told me they had buried our weep screed against code which could rot out the wood in our house whileI was showing a picture of an unsafe step they had installed).

It went fine but the fountain they installed isn't currently working...I think it's leaking so I have to follow that up. We had an issue with the fire pick...it's not necessary their fault since the plumber installed it however that started cracking the granite around it. The plants in general are doing well and the design has worked out nicely.

Scott is a remarkably talented artist. We have worked with several landscape companies, but he's in a different league. Really. In our case, Scott identified many wonderful opportunities for transforming our property. In many cases we simply moved forward on faith in Scott. That faith was well placed.