Southern Hospitality Lawn & Landscaping

Professor Green Thumb who is owned by Southern Hospitality does a horrible job. They mow at close to 30mph, really just trample down the grass with the tires. They leave grass clippings all over our driveways and sidewalks and use weed eaters without the safety guards to cut smaller areas instead of push mowers. Overall an awful experience and we are stuck with them for the next 90 days regardless of how bad of a job they do because they slip predatory clauses into their contracts that require you to give them 90 days notice and threaten to sue you when you want to discontinue service because they do such a horrible job. Don't use these people, they are awful.

I have used Southern for several months to maintain my yard. They are punctual and do an excellent job. Often they will trim bushes that need to be cut back. They have adjusted the cutting height from my previous lawn service and the grass looks much more healthy. I would highly recommend their services.

While they did an okay job, I would not use this company again. I just bought this house and the way one of the two guys who actually came to do the work was acting really mortified me and I only hope my new next-door neighbors didn't hear him carrying on and behaving like he was. For example, when they first arrived and I pointed out the neighbor's bamboo that needed to be trimmed off my roof, he bellowed out very loudly, just a few feet from my new neighbor's house "Whoooooooooooa, GOOD THING THAT'S NOT A MARIJUANA PLANT *HA HA HA HAAA*!" I was mortified. I know he was just trying to be funny, as apparently he apparently felt that the bamboo leaves looked similar to the other type of plant (they really don't, but anyway), and maybe I just need to relax and lighten up, yet all I could think was: what if my new next-door neighbors on that side just heard him bellow out "marijuana plant"?! What might they think is going on over at their new neighbor's house? I want to make a good impression on my neighbors, but that ship may have just sailed! He also kept spitting, which doesn't hurt the yard at all, but it seemed unnecessary, crude and unprofessional. He kept making reference to how religious he is, which again, just made me uncomfortable. Finally, he seemed very agitated the whole time and was rushing the other guy with him and snapping at him constantly (yet then following it up by saying "You know I'm your brother in Christ."), and then the kicker was, he said to me "What are you doing after this, are you busy?" I felt instantly uncomfortable and put on the spot, and I asked "Why?", and he then told me it would help them if I would go to the city dump with them when they were done, so they wouldn't have to pay to dump their truck full of landscaping waste (which they had accumulated from jobs ahead of mine--only a tiny fraction of it would be from my job). I asked "Will you drive me back here afterwards?", at which point he said "Can't you take your own car?" So, I was thinking: let me get this straight, you want me to take time that I don't have today, and put mileage and gas on my car, to drive with you to the dump and save you money, when this was not brought up during the estimate and I'm receiving no discount for doing this? Legal disposal of their waste should be something that was built into the estimate I was given, if they are a professional company. I went ahead and said yes, I'd go, as they hadn't done the work yet and I didn't want to make this guy irriated with me. I owned another house for 18 years and that house had many trees on the property, so I have used many certified arborist tree services over the years. This company is not certified arborists, they are just a landscaping company. In all those years, and approximately six or seven tree service companies, I've only had ONE other company ask me to accompany them to the dump, and there was a big difference: the difference was, that other company asked me during the ESTIMATE, and they offered me a discount. So I had a choice of whether to say yes or no, I got a discount for going with them, and I wasn't ambushed at the last minute, so I had time to plan my schedule around it and I didn't feel cornered. In short, I didn't appreciate this guy pressuring me at the last minute, with no notice and no discount, to go to the dump with them. It was very unprofessional, plus I really didn't have time for it and it messed up my schedule for the rest of the afternoon (I had already worked a full-time job that day and had tons of other things to get done re the new house that afternoon, which I mostly didn't get to because of this. Finally, the other thing I'm not thrilled with is, as I went around the front of the house to wait at my car for them to finish loading up their truck in the back alley and pull around so we could drive to the dump, I noticed: oh no, they didn't trim the bamboo off the roof, it was still all over the roof! That was the main thing I hired them to do, and we had discussed it when they arrived. So I rushed to the back to try to grab them before they were all loaded up and ready to go, but they had already started driving around to the front to meet me. I rushed back to the front, and said, I'm sorry, but you missed the bamboo and that was the main reason I hired you guys, would you mind doing it, even though you already have your truck loaded up and packed? Well, they were very nice about it, and said they'd do it, and the junior guy said "Should I get the ladder?", but the other guy told him no, I'll just use this (very long thing with a saw at the end of it). Well, he proceeded to hack the bamboo waaaaaaaaaay back and, instead of finessing it as I think they would have, if they had taken the time to untie and unlod the ladder from the top of all their landscaping waste in the truck, the senior guy had the junior guy just bend back stalks of the bamboo and the senior guy then "topped" them. When they were released and went back up, at least two of the stalks they did this to were on my neighbor's side of the fence, topped. Again, I was mortified. I think my neighbor takes pride in his bamboo and we should have only cut it at most to my fence, NOT anything on his side. So now I have to apologize to him next time I see him and assure him that, in future, I would never trim anything on his side of the fence. In short: on the one hand, they did a pretty good job as far as lifting the one tree higher from the garage than it had been (it was only like three limbs, but still, they did a nice job on that part), and in taking out an extremely thorny citrus plant that was dangerous in the backyard. Yet the fellow who came to do the estimate in the first place seemed to know nothing about what kind of tree any of the ones I asked him about are (I had just bought the house a few days before meeting the guy there, so I was hoping he could tell me what certain trees are, how big they will get, etc., so I could decide if one in particular should be moved from where it is while it is young--he had no idea what it is, or what the fungus is growing on another one...I probably shouldn't have expected him to, as he is not a certified arborist, but next time I'd go with a certified arborist, and I'd recommend that to anyone especially if you have a lot of trees on your property--this particular property doesn't have many, so I thought this company would be okay, and they were recommended by a friend). They did okay and they were very punctual, which I always appreciate, yet my main thing was the behavior of the lead guy that came to do the actual trimming just made me very uncomfortable, and I would never have them back again for that reason. I'm sure they'd come back and cut one stalk of bamboo that now looks very stark all by itself on my side, since they hacked way too much of the rest of the bamboo that was on my side away, and they had said "We're gonna get that one", but they must have forgotten. They seem like they would be very accomodating in coming back to do a touch-up if you notice they forgot something, but the thing is, I wouldn't ask them back for that or use them in the future because they didn't know much about trees/plants, and, mainly, the one guy's behavior just really made me uncomfortable in many ways (the other guy that came out on the trimming team was fine).