EcoStar Landscape Mgmt

The job was a hot mess from Day One. My neighbor had previously worked with Daniel and his then-partner on some landscaping at their house, which is how we ended up with Daniel. By the time he started the job, that partnership had fallen apart. Looking back, we realized it was probably because he's so flaky! Case in point: a three-day job took FIVE WEEKS! The whole job was just mis-managed from the start. Here are a few highlights: 1. I'd asked that the rock retaining wall match the limestone of my house. Instead, the mason used large stone blocks. It looks nice enough, but it's not what I'd requested. 2. The wall was built around the metal posts in such a way that the final wood fence hangs over the edge of the wall instead of being centered over the rocks. That's inexperience or mis-communication or lack of attention to detail ... or all of the above. 3. The rock wall guys were also not attentive - on more than one occasion, I had to point out stuff like sections that weren't level across the top or were leaning front-to-back. I also had to insist on another row of rock being installed (in accordance with the original contract) to bring the retaining wall up to the soil level on my neighbor's side. 4. We'd asked them to re-work the landscaping beds on the neighbor's side - squaring off a rounded edge & lining it up with the front of the shared fence. I had agreed to move the fence-line forward on my side several feet for this purpose. But he just didn't do that part, so now the flower bed curves into a point several feet back on the fence, leaving this strange v-shaped spot that just collects dirt. 5. Daniel originally promised that at least the front section of the fence would be completed in just a few days, so none of our dogs would be able to wander farther than each other's backyards. In reality, the fence was not secured for more than 3 weeks, and the final pickets dividing the two lots were finally installed almost 2 weeks later! That's more than a month of "walkies" instead of just letting the dogs out into their own backyard. 6. Why did this relatively simple job take so long? Every day a new excuse! He just didn't show up when he said he would ... over & over & over again. We'd call & get voice mail, we'd email him & get no response. Then eventually, he'd call or email with some lame excuse, and promise to be out the next day. And a few days later, he'd actually show up. 7. By the time the fence was finally completed, my neighbors had left for a long-planned vacation that none of us had expected to be impacted by this project. Before they left, we all agreed that we'd settle the bill with Daniel once we'd all had a chance to examine the work together. Once the job was finally finished, Daniel contacted me every single day, claiming that my neighbors really wanted me to just pay him now. Nice try! 8. About one week after we settled the final bill, a very upset rock wall guy banged on my door, demanding payment for the work or he was going to put a lien on the house! Guess who didn't pay his subcontractor? I felt bad for the guy, but his threat was empty - we had already paid Daniel for the work. I'd be shocked if Daniel Gomez is still in business - I just don't think he is capable of managing even simple jobs like this one.

Daniel Gomez, the owner of EcoStar, is a polite, personable young man. I hired him midsummer of 2009 to mow, keep the hedges under control (the lot had been over-planted by the builder with hedges around the entire house and along the length of the back fence), top dress in spring, and maintain the irrigation system. When he did the initial evaluation of the yard, I asked him point blank if the lot had more hedges than his crew would be able to keep under reasonable control, and he told me the hedges wouldn't be a problem at all. But the hedges were a problem because after the crew's first visit, the hedges were trimmed once, maybe twice, and only a few of them. Most of them weren't touched after the first trim. The irrigation system was never evaluated, and I never pressed them for it because by the time I realized that was going to be a problem, I'd been complaining about the overgrown hedges so long I was as sick of listening to myself as the crew chief was of ignoring me. When the mow season was over, the hedges were so overgrown I had to use loppers to cut them down to manageable size. Over the winter of 2009/10 they removed a large hedge from the back yard, but regardless of repeated requests to be put on the schedule for top dressing in the spring, that never happened. During the growing season that year (2010), the lawn was mown regularly, but the hedges were allowed to grow out of control again, although the crew chief made more of an effort towards it than in the previous year. Again, at the end of the season, I was left with overgrown hedges. In January of this year, I had most of the hedges removed from the back yard, as well as one in the side yard I'd had to hack through to access the irrigation controls. And for the first time, Daniel sent a couple of guys over to top dress the lawn. Some of the compost was too hot and burned the grass, but it recovered after awhile, and Daniel voluntarily refunded a sizable amount of the fee. The crew started mowing in April--the same two guys who had done the top dressing. They were sweet men, a father and son, who obviously had never handled lawn tools before. They were apologetic when I asked them not to hack off the bedding plants with the line trimmer next time. Next time, they hacked off the bedding plants anyway, but the bedding plants were the least of the damage that visit, as they had come prepared to do battle with obstacles. Obstacles, such as the two hedges of rosemary spilling over a retaining wall that hampered their mowing. They sheared one hedge flush with the wall, exposing dead wood and effectively ruining the hedge. I assume they omitted mutilating the other rosemary hedge because the effect must have given them a bit of a shock. (Oops!!!) Unfortunately, that didn't stop them "pruning" the lower limbs of two live oaks that were obstacles to standing up straight to mow beneath, or to hack out the lower third of the canopy of a specimen crepe myrtle, an obstacle that caused them the same grief the oak limbs had done. I didn't want to rat out the guys to the boss over the trees and rosemary. They hadn't been malicious mutilators, just ignorant. (Who hires garden-ignorant people to work on a landscape crew?) But I was waiting for them the day of their next scheduled mow, intending to educate them about "pruning" trees, not only out of season but without the homeowner's OK. (Who arms garden-ignorant people with huge cutting tools and lets them loose in clients' gardens?) But they didn't show. They never showed again. Nor did Daniel return calls or respond to emails. Under the assumption he had finally joined the growing ranks of lawn services who had quit without notice during the five years I'd lived at "Hedge House," I started looking for someone to finish out the mowing season. More than a month passed; I was still looking for a replacement (the few who answered their phone or returned my messages were booked solid) and still doing the mowing myself, when Daniel dropped by to tell me he'd been ill and unable to work. But he said he was back and "in it for the long haul" if I still needed him. He mowed two or three times, trimmed the remaining hedges once, then disappeared again. Not such a long haul. I didn't try to contact him again. Had Daniel relapsed? If so, I hope he's recovered. And I wish him well. He seemed like too decent a person to abandon a middle-aged woman to pushing an 70 pound mower across steep inclines in triple digit temperatures. Or not. Who knows what was going on with him? He had problems communicating. I suspect he would probably disagree with that statement, as this year for some reason he adopted the habit of calling to let me know when he was going to mow next. Half of the time he didn't show up when he said he would, so I don't consider that communication of anything useful. I wish he would have let me know that he couldn't service my lawn any longer. No explanation would have been necessary, just a responsible adult notice that we were done. I could continue, but anything further would be gratuitous venting. Bottom line: if you have no planted beds or irrigation system that needs maintaining, if your lot is grass only and you need someone to mow it who may or may not show up on schedule and who may or may not finish out the mowing season, EcoStar will work just fine for you.

THey basically ruined my lawn.The work included mowing, laying seed, moved rocks, and fixing the sprinkler system. Apparently the sprinkler did not fixed along with other things they did wrong. They left a trench in the yard that was 8'x1', and put in a plastic edging backwards. The price was supposedly cheap, until they found a reason why they needed to charge me more money to get the problem resolved. I will no longer do business with this company in the future.