Casey Landscape & Arboriculture Inc

They showed up on time, had a copy of the writen quote i had been given & got to work. The trees were cut into about 2 ft lengths & i kept them. The branches were chipped & (tho they had their doubts) they backed the truck down the back slope so the chipper could spray the chips over the cleared area. After lunch a guy showed up with a bobcat to haul away the logs. I told him we were keepingthe logs so since he had nowhere else to go he helped out with the chipping for a while. They also took down another small tree (sapling) that was in their way, which was fine because I didn't like it anyway. They were personable & diligent. I wish there had been more cleanup in the area but they did the best they could working around the remaining logs since we were keeping the wood.

The quality of the work done was highly variable: some excellent things that we are delighted with, and some things that are completely and inexcusably poorly done. Brian and his crew have serious communication issues, both among themselves and with us, their customer. Part of the issue was that Brian didn't take notes when we reviewed work to be done, which meant either that he forgot at least half of what we discussed, causing errors and confusion that frequently required rework, or we would take detailed notes and send him a long email with detailed instructions, putting the burden on us for something we were paying him to do. Brian is alternately engaging, charming and helpful, and then aloof and uncommunicative. Some of his crew were on the ball and communicative, and some impossible to deal with. Brian also made assurances to us about aspects of the job that, in hind sight, he must have known he could not deliver on. For example, he told us repeatedly that he was sure that 8 irrigation zones would cover the entire lawn and and the beds. The system that was installed couldn't cover everything adequately, in part because eight zones aren't enough. In the end, our assessment of Brian as a business man is that he and in particular, his office help, are sloppy and dishonest. We received many erroneous and inflated bills. Brian also has the peculiar habit of showing up after completing a major piece of work and requesting payment in person; no bill or itemized invoice, the amount owed is not even clearly stated when the verbal request is made; written detail is only provided if it is demanded, at which time their disarray and confusion becomes apparent. We are very happy with the basics of the construction: the design, with a few minor exceptions is great; the work that his foreman, TJ, did with raw cedar is almost a work of art. The retaining wall, stone fireplace, extension of an existing stone wall, grading, and all of the brick work for the patios and walks are also fine. He and his crew worked closely with us to get a design on all of these elements that we are very happy with, and the quality of the work is fine. We also accompanied Brian and Matt to the wholesale nursery in Westport and chose all of the major plants, which was an enjoyable experience. Almost all of the large plants that they provided were properly installed and, a year on are healthy; one red cedar died over the winter, but that isn't too bad given all that they installed (except that it is probably at least partly due to the very poor job that they did with the irrigation system.) Now to the bad parts: They took substantially longer than they initially promised. Theye started the project in early September, saying that it would be three to four weeks. By December, they had gotten the topsoil down, and in desperation, hydroseeded, saying the would finish the job in the spring, but they wanted to at least get some seed down. When reseeding in the spring, their unsupervised sub-contractor hydroseeded the vegetable garden and when asked to correct it, thy billed us for weeding it. We bought high-end lighting from him, but the installation was very sloppily done. The irrigation system, for which he charged us a premium price, was installed by an un-certified hack who didn't know what he was doing; after having them back several times to fix leaks, I had a couple of local irrigation contractors look the system over. I am having to install a new system from scratch because what they did was unrecoverable. Brian assured me that he would get four inches of topsoil down -- we have at most two inches in most of the new lawn. In the first growing season, during which we continued to retain Casey so that they would get the lawn going, they could not manage the irrigation system to get the right amount of water on the lawn -- in part because it couldn't cover all of the lawn -- the result being that the lawn is still in very rough shape. Two large and beautiful weeping yews that we had saved from the wrecking ball were reinstalled in new locations by Casey's crew. They did not handle this very well, moving them around on a skid steer and trying to install them off the bucket. That went ok for one of them, but the other one went into the hole wrong and they couldn't recover to a reasonable angle, so it got planted at an unfortunate angle, with one of the limbs partly buried in the top soil. And the rough treatment shook the very sandy root ball apart which did not help the plant. Now, ~a year later, this plant is still on life support, though we are hopeful that it will survive. They almost killed all of the espaliered fruit trees and a bunch of knockout rose plants when their crew tried to kill the weeds in the gravel driveway with roundup on a windy day -- the overspray burned the fruit trees and the roses -- they dropped their leaves in early june; he replaced some of the roses, and the rest came back, as did the fruit trees, but they didn't bear any fruit. Finally is the billing and the cost. This was an expensive project which should have come out beautifully. They charged us a premium for much of the work, then inexcusably cut corners in too many places: inadequate top soil; ridiculous irrigation system; substandard mulch (wood chips mixed with a little pine bark). Plus they could not keep track of their billing, and they sent us too many inflated bills that I had to argue them down off of. Sometimes it seemed like it was just confusion and mixed signals, other times it was hard to see how it was anything but an out right attempt to rip us off. It is too bad, because I think Brian and his key guys have a lot of talent and are quite enthusiastic about trees and some of the hardscaping that they do. But Brian shouldn't be trying to run a business; he should at least fire his incompetent and dishonest office manager and he should sub out the irrigation and lighting to someone who will do it right.

Showed up a day later than expected. However, there was a storm that came through the day of expected service that may have kept them occutied with emergency service (which is what they said happened). Crew performed work as requested, plus a couple of other minor additions (for no extra charge). However, the boss kept calling them to get them to the next job. To their credit, the crew stayed until completition. Cleanup was mostly good, with only minor work left undone. I pickup up small amounts of debris and straightened out gravel and wood chip portions of lawn after they left. I wouldn't expect them do to it perfectly.

He started the project by removing and putting on pallet's a cobblestone walkway that was between the garage and the rock wall 2 pallets of them and then putting them out of the way he also saved approx 2sq yards of stone that bordered the walkway. So far so good He suggested to put the existing rocks in his trucks to get them out of the way. So at this point he had two trucks full of rocks, The excavated material was then trucked to his yard they would fill a truck and wait sometimes 1 1/2 hours for the truck to return his workers would just sit around and wait for the truck to return. After two days of this his workers told me that they could not remove any more dirt because of the tree stumps and that I would have to pay more money to remove the stumps, so I asked how much more and his worker said he didn't know? so we waited for Brian to show up to get a price of the stump removal about 1 1/2 hours waiting for him to show up. We are not talking about big stumps the trees were approx 6-8 in diameter I could dig them out by hand In fact I did dig one of them out and removed it with my wheelbarrow. This was just a way to raise the price because as I said the incline of the hill made for a lot more loads that needed removed I believe he under estimated the amount of fill the had to be removed and he was trying to increase the price. So after agreeing on a price 100.00 each( not a big deal). After that I gave him 1000.00 he didn't ask for it but I thought he might put it higher on his priority list of jobs to get done. It was Friday 3/19 the person operating the bobcat told me he would be there Sat.but would be there after 9 I said ok no problem. Summary to this point: The person operating the bobcat I would say 1- 10 10 being excellent would be a 5-6 most times he would show up with a day laborer that just day-dreamed so after a point the bobcat person would just try and do it by himself. Some days there would be two workers that actually had a clue, Some would work for a couplke of hours then just leave leaving just the bobcat operator.I had commented to the driver one day this looks like the three Stooges Landscape Company. I sat there one day watching him try to set a rock one rock same rock for a hour and 45 min. he would put it up and then it would fall back down over and over again. Ok back to the wall so I waited till 12 noon on sat. and then called them because nobody had showed up. It was a beautiful day approx 70 degrees not a cloud in the sky. When I asked why no one had shown up he told me that he had not told anybody to go there, I told him that V said he would be there and he said "I decide who goes where" So I said aren't you a landscape Co.and you don't work on Saturdays? He then said" I gave my guys the day off" I then told him that my yard/driveway was a mess and I expect when someone tells me they are going to be there that they will be there. He then says "Well how about if I just quit you got 1000.00 dollars worth of work done" I then said this is not worth anything at this point he also had a truck full of very large granite boulders at his shop that were mine so if he wants to quit I need my rocks back. After arguing and yelling over the phone he said they would be there Mon It rained all day Sun./Mon. I was left with a mud pit on the side of my garage in my driveway and along the front walk to the front door. They showed up Tues.said to muddy to work and took their bobcat away. I was left wondering if they would show back up after Sat.phone conversation. They showed up wed. two people after 1/2 hour one person had to leave to see his mother, so this left one person and a complete waste of another day. However V told me that they did work Sat.planting flowers. Summary 2 : Brian.Casey so far has threatened to Quit! ( I believe he over estimated type and length of project) therefore wanted to just get out. He has flat out lied to me telling me he gave hid guys the day off when they told me they were working and Brian didn't care about my project (at this point not much money to make off it) So Wed. and Thurs one person showed up to work not a lot getting done at this point. I then told Brian I was getting more rocks he wanted me to have them set aside for him to pick up ( this was so he could charge me for delivery of the rocks but the rocks delivery was included in the price. I called him at noon of Fri and let him know when they would be delivered, they showed up at the house at 4:30. This time they had their best bobcat person with them a guy named TJ he got more work done in 6 hrs then they had done it the 6 days. On sat TJ and V showed up and began to finish the job got to a point where the wall was even but there was still 2 ft of embankment above the wall I told them that I wanted all the very large boulders set up there as I had no way to get them up there, we had agreed with Brian on this the day before so they were ready to cll it quits and leave. I told them about what we agreed to yesterday but he told me Brian said not to do that. I then said if you do not want to do what the customer wants then leave now, He would not leave and kept arguing with me I then told him to stop he then said Brian would would be there shortly. When Brian showed up I wanted him to sign a paper that said I gave him money as I had asked for over a week ago but never received. In the end I told him the large rocks on the top of the wall or you don't get the last payment. Summary Final: The rock wall was done not the way I wanted it. I had to fight / yell/ scream to get what I wanted (What he said he would do) He has a child-like attitude. He has very poor communication skills, don't believe anything he tells you. He is worst contractor I have ever dealt with period.