Landscape Design Group

It did not go well from the beginning. They built the retaining wall and it was not level (neighbor across the street and anyone who looked at it not level). I argued with them for two hours about the exact amount of out of level it was, then just flat out told them to redo it. He made a comment later that "it wasn't that bad in the first place." We got the project completed, but had to have them come back twice to do the final clean up. Within a couple of months we started to see cracks in the mortar of the wall where they had lined up all the joints in the stone and the cap from the ground to the top in a straight line. (Duh). I asked them to come back and make a permanent repair by modifying the stone joints so that they were not lined up which created a seam for it to crack. They wiped the wrong color of mortar in the cracks and left without washing down the driveway or cleaning up the repairs. I called and had them come back to fix the wall correctly, and clean my driveway. They redid the stone so the joints were not lined up, but left one that hadn't cracked yet. (It is cracked now) I had to call them back twice to clean the repairs and wash down the driveway on BOTH sides were they did repairs. It looked like my driveway had been whitewashed in areas...again. We had also asked them to repair some of the cap stones because they had popped loose. They said they did, and it did have new mortar in the gaps, but I just pushed on it and it came off. They came back to fix that, and of course I had to have them come back after that to clean the driveway. Then it began to warm up and all our new plants and trees were dying because they could not get enough water. Their solution was for us to water everything, every day, by hand. (Didn't we just pay them to do this so we wouldn't have to water by hand?)Okay, we'll give that a shot because the drip system is still working also. The plants and trees kept getting worse and they could not understand how a couple were doing great and most were dying. They told us to hand water more, and crank up the drip system. We were up to 50 minutes every other day already!!! The cap stones broke loose again, so they fixed them again, and I had to call and have them come back to clean the driveway. They argued with me that they did clean the driveway. I sent pictures and they came out the next day and cleaned the driveway. I forgot to mention that we sprung a huge leak in the drip system about 3 months after the project was completed. They had bent one of the drip hoses so bad it cracked. I had them come out and fix that. Remember, this is the new system that I paid to have modified to fit the new landscaping and protect all our new bushes, flowers and trees. It was in the agreement and I have an email trail were we discussed this specifically before we signed up. Finally we decided that it was ridiculous that we had to water everything by hand every night, our drip system was running that much, but everything was still dying from a lack of water. I made a decision to break away from the conventional thought of just randomly laying the drip lines and install a tight, uniform grid of the entire flowerbed area so that it would basically water everything evenly and have a large margin of over capacity, because the current silliness was not a long term solution. They came over to fix the cap again...and we began to discuss the new drip design I wanted. I told them to get all the mulch out of the flowerbeds so we could see what we had and lay out the grid system I had in mind. I made it clear that I was prepared to pay them to do what I asked and they accepted. They immediately began to pull up the drip system, leaving the mulch still on top of the dirt. What was quickly realized by all is that they had never even touched the old drip line system or modified the lay-out in any way to protect the new plants. This meant that were it was watering was doing nothing for the plants in there now. I told them that I still wanted to do my plan and that I would pay them. We discussed everything for an hour (literally) about the lay-out, the number of lines to use, where to put the joints and tees, etc....all of it. I told them to take out the entire old system and start from scratch; and take the mulch out. Remember, I'm paying them to do what we want. I came out an hour later and they were modifying the existing system and it was nothing like we had just discussed for an hour. They were stunned that they had missed it. Now everything was on top of the mulch. I explained again for another 30 minutes, and I drew them a picture so "there would be no more problems". I came back an hour later and it wasn't even close. So then I took scrap pieces of drip lines and literally laid out the entire design for them which took about 40 minutes. Now that I had made it child-proof on one side, I told them I want it to be exactly the same on the other side. I emphasized it multiple times because my confidence in there ability was pretty low at this stage. I came home the next day and the first side was pretty much like I laid it out, but they had missed a couple of things. "We saw that, we'll fix it, don't worry, we're not done yet". They never fixed them. The amazing thing was that the other side was completely different than the first side, The spacing, the shape, the number of lines around each plant, all of it. He came back to discuss it and his defense was, and I quote, "it's basically the same". I explained that a Yugo and a Lexus are basically the same because they are both cars, but they are not the same. I wanted it to be the same as the other side since they are identical in shape except for one is longer than the other. I wish I could post pictures....its comical. We had now discussed the ultimate goal of assuring that every area of the flower beds are watered evenly throughout so that anything we plant in the flower beds now or in the future would be watered exactly like any other area of the flowerbed, and we could eliminate any variance for the 5th time. His exact statement to me was that the second side is "adequate" in his opinion, and it is just like what anyone else would do. I reminded him that the reason we were here is to make sure we are not doing it like anyone else would do it, because that's why we're here now; and it was not the "same" as the other side. He was stunned that it was not what I wanted and started bad-mouthing me. It was all my fault. I was too picky. I told him to leave. So let's recap. I have a retaining wall that still has cracks in it, I have cap pieces that are still loose, I have issues with my drip system (that has now been laid out above the mulch), I have dead plants and a tree; he has made 8 trips to fix all this stuff repeatedly (not counting the clean up trips), and we are about a year into this. He is stunned that my wife and I are upset and called me an idiot to my face, and said "I don't care what your wife thinks". I probably should add that our friends a couple of streets over fired him when he did their landscaping also; but we still selected him because we have known him for 20+ years. Shame on us.