We hired Landwork Enterprises to do our large landscaping job ($30K). We saved money as LE is not a higher-end company that drafts a professional drawing of your proposed job. Instead, your job rides on a verbal agreement of a loosely defined idea and you have to be there, guiding the process, every minute. Ryan does not bring a landscaping architect’s knowledge to the job. In fact, he seems to be lacking even the standard landscaper's knowledge of plants. Some of the plants he chose for our project were not appropriate for the sun exposure and many have died! The plants were largely planted too shallow, as well, leaving the roots exposed. We advised him we needed plants that the deer would not find tasty, yet various plants that he chose have already been devoured.
The company is comprised of the owner, Ryan, and his three Spanish workers, only one of whom speaks (very) broken English. Ryan showed up on the job each day after his workers and gave them generic instructions and then left for the rest of the day. His workers drove a little backhoe erratically, slamming into our big pine trees (repeatedly) and simply ran down smaller trees. We lost at least four trees (that we know of) due to their damage and we have one big pine that was left with a very bad gouge. Due to the damage, this tree may be one that we’ll have to hire someone to bring down later, or worse: it may fall down on the house. Ryan replaced only one 10’ tree, with a smaller, less expensive tree which we paid partial labor to plant. One day his workers were driving the backhoe in mad donuts around a big stump that was to be buried. They were purposely banging it into the tree stump, trying to break the stump out! They were digging up my yard under which lay a septic drainage field that they were to be working as GINGERLY as possible over so as not to damage! The backhoe was damaged and leaked oil all over the yard.
Ryan also knew of damage he and his crew did and he tried to cover it up. He proved himself to be anything but trustworthy. To top off the whole, unfortunate experience, the bulbs in the lighting units he installed burned out in about 8 days (when only lit at night for about 2-3 hours per night). When we called him about it, he never returned our calls. When we went to install one of the two “complimentary” replacement bulbs in one of the lights, we noticed that the bulbs already had a black burn mark on them. They were used! Perhaps Ryan replaces the light bulbs in his own yard before they burn out with brand new ones, and installs his old ones in client’s yards. It’s unfathomable that he’s stayed in business as long as he has. And all the while, he’s worked harder than necessary, because his jobs all HAVE to be new. No one would ever call him back for a repeat performance.
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