CURTIS HORTICULTURE, INC

Stephanie and her crew are certainly very nice. Their price was competitive--native plants are not cheap. Her crew was very hard working. I had a couple of issues with them. First of all, Stephanie has a somewhat casual relationship with time. The start date on the job kept going further and further out. Second, she very, very involved with low water use plants; very environmentally friendly. But she is not terrific with non-native plants. My plans called for an area that included annuals. This area was totally neglected, not properly landscaped, and will eventually have to be re-landscaped. If all you want is low water use landscaping, they are probably fine. Otherwise, buyer beware.

I got the impression when I talked to Stephanie that I was going to get alot more work done than I did. I had mainly wanted the plants to be trimmed back, but they were mostly untouched. They did take down a small skinny tree that we no longer wanted and cleaned up some leaf litter in the backyard.

They are not a mow, blow, and go type operation. They are very careful about trimming stuff; they are like the difference in a good hair cut and bad hair cut. They are all bonded and very good. They are starting to get into the design. If you are looking for someone to just mow your lawn, you might want to look somewhere else, but if you want someone to really maintain it they are very good. They are very green, trained, and they speak really good English so there is no communication problems. They get paid $50 per hour, per person. I just tell her what I want to spend that month and she sends them out for that amount of hours and the right number of people according. If you are not happy with something she makes it right, there is never a question. It seems like a lot of money to me, but she pays her people a good wage and that is important to me. When they say they are going to be here they are. They are very responsive.