Naturescape

Used Naturescape for many years and my lawn was never great. The last two years my lawn was getting really bad and they did nothing to correct it until I started making demands. Turns out I had grubs and they never caught it. Many areas of my lawn were going completely bare. Over a 2 year period they did do free lawn aeration, lime treatment, and spot fertilization, but not until I recommended grub treatment did they do that. Soon after I began to see improvement. The owner said his guy should have noticed the poor situation and made recommendations. Never happened. I actually took getting another lawn service onsite to identify the grubs. My neighbor uses NS as well and his results are no better. We will both be changing to new service this year.

This is the second year we used Naturescape. Last year we lost one third to one half of our front lawn due to grubs. We dug up all the brown patches and reseeded ourselves. The first complaint is we could have been offered grub control, especially after the worker saw that half of our lawn was brown and crispy or bare. But that is not my major complaint. We decided to give them another year and surely after two years we'd have a nice green lawn. We water the lawn every week. Always have. One of my preferences is to have an early green up for our lawn. But even neighbors who never had a lawn service had their lawns green up before ours. In fact, ours was the last to green up on our street. After our second application this year I called to schedule grub control and mention that we had crab or quack grass and clover in the lawn. I got no answer on that day, and finally left my phone number. That day and the next I waited for a call. I called them on Monday and the receptionist got very testy with me when I said I waited all day Friday for a call. She told me how she kept calling and calling and there was no answer. Whatever. I asked to schedule grub control and mentioned the crab or quack grass which she said they can't do anything about. I said there is also clover in the yard and to their credit, they did come out the next week with a weed control application and did not charge us. In the spring I noticed some of the Lilies of the Valleys in back had started to grow into the lawn by the ledge stone that is a boundary between the flowers and the lawn. They were sprayed in our first application and died within a day or two. Not a problem, they were growing around the stones. Today I saw the worker take the hose of herbicide and pour as if filling a bucket on a few patches of white Impatiens I planted in front of those stones. That happened this morning and they are dying already. They were in full bloom and could not be mistaken for weeds. I went outside to ask if this was the grub control application and what he had just sprayed. Was it fertilizer or herbicide? Yes it was grub control and unfortunately it was herbicide he just dumped on the Impatiens. I would not have and did not mention the Impatiens to him because I realized the two areas around the trees in the front were wet with the same stuff. We have two "ponds" surrounding trees filled with wild flowers and edged with ledge stone in the front and covered with large bark. Today the worker decided to spray those two "ponds" with herbicide. I was sick to my stomach when I saw how the bark was wet with herbicide. I asked if he sprayed them he said yes. and I told him that we had planted trilliums in there. I looked at the other and asked if he sprayed that one too. Yes he did. So today I lost Solomon's Seal, Grandiflora trilliums and worst of all, Mayflowers that grew there since 1995 which are native to Wisconsin and impossible to buy or transplant. He said he could write it down and he won't spray it anymore and I said fine, let's do that. Then he said, "But there was a guy who (he indicated came out of my house)who told me earlier (in the season) that nothing was growing in there so I should get rid of it." He kept saying I should remember that guy who told him he could spray there. My husband works and has never had any contact with the workers. My recommendation to Naturescape is retraining of your workers. The guy who did my lawn today had a fixation on dowsing plants that he feels should not be there. He really dumps herbicide on plants but gives a barely there spray to the large portions of the lawn. His concentration should be on exactly that, the middle of the lawn. He also should never have lied to me and say some guy told him in person that nothing was supposed to grow in the ponds around my trees. The lady who took my call should have said, "I must have made a mistake, I thought I called back" instead of telling me how many times she called me and there never was an answer. I'm retired and was home waiting for the darn call. I'm the one who finally called you back. The last thing the worker said to me was that the herbicide sinks really deep in the ground and that's why the trilliums won't die. Why bother putting herbicide on if it sinks really deep and therefore shouldn't kill any plant? Why make up something like that? My only decision now is whether to cancel the remain application this year and have another lawn service finish or see what they do the for their final application.