Business ProfileforAmerican Landscape

We hired American landscape to complete our lawn and patio on a new build home with no current landscaping.
The planning procedure was great with our project manager. He got back to us promptly, worked with us on our budget, and designed a patio consistent with our visions. He communicated well on the start time of the project and was there almost daily to make sure the project was going well. There were some adjustments that were made and he was flexible with this and able to accommodate everything requested.
The project seemed to go well and looked great at completion.
Unfortunately, this is where a lot of problems started.
Prior to our project being completed, the pavers placed were already starting to chip. Fortunately, I felt this situation was handled extremely well by the company and ultimately all of our pavers were replaced in spring. We were told the problem was a “bad batch” of pavers.
Besides the above problem, the rest of the problems were handled with much less ease. Communication from project manager significantly lacked. There were times I needed to reach out to him weeks later to try to get a response after attempting previous communication. This happened for months upon months to try to get the below problems addressed.
-a few of our plants did not make it through winter. 2 were replaced. We were told that only completely dead plants qualified under warranty. We had two grass-like bushes that had one or two leaves sprout all season and were told they didn’t qualify to be replaced. Our project manager told us he would be out in mid-May to assess these plants and didn’t end up coming until late June/early July.
-our contract stated that erosion blankets would be placed where necessary on our lawn after seeding. When finished, the erosion blankets were placed throughout the ENTIRE lawn, even in flat spots. While I appreciate them being extra careful, I don’t know if it was really needed throughout the entire lawn. And I’m sure I was paying for every blanket placed. To make matters worse, each blanket was staked down by at least 4 stakes. While they are meant to stay in place, ultimately, they came up, bent, twisted, etc causing us to step on them and trip over them. The first time we mowed our lawn, we hit once every few feet. One even went flying through the mower and hit my car. Ultimately, we had to buy a metal detector in attempts to find them all to prevent damage to the mower or injury to my family. Given our lawn was 0.6 acres, I spent 15+ hours picking them up, and estimate well over 500 picked up.
-our lawn did not come in very well in multiple areas. I was told this was being watched closely by the lawn care team through American. We also had a seemingly excessive number of weeds. After multiple calls to get someone to address this, we were ultimately told that acidic top soil was brought in by American. They would need to come back to spray lawn to neutralize lawn and then would need to reseed the areas that did not grow in. This did not happen promptly despite multiple requests for a timeline; however, it did ultimately happen.
-when our pavers were replaced, the saw that was used ultimately cut through our flower bed irrigation. I did not get notified about this by the company (nor did the company attempt to contact the irrigation company) and instead found out when our flower bed by the patio started flooding. I called the irrigation company thinking it was their fault however when they came out, they told me it was flooding due to the line being cut. When American Landscaping came out next, it was admitted to me that they attempted to fix it themselves.
- when the project outline of our built-in fire pit was spray painted, I had requested that it be extended further from the house. I had asked the project manager was code was in regards to fire pit distance from house. He got back to me promptly that the code was more than what was initially planned in the final project blue print. Had I not mentioned anything, our fire pit would have been placed not up to code and we wouldn’t have been able to actually use it.
-Lastly, when noticing excessive amounts of weeds early in spring, I was encouraged to get a weed program from American to control the weeds (recommended by the project manager). This was before finding out the acidic top soil was brought in. I purchased this program and paid in full. Unfortunately, NONE of the applications worked to control the weeds. I made call after call about it. Later when the reseeding took place, I was told they couldn’t spray the entire yard without jeopardizing the new turf placde. Ultimately, because the weed program was completely ineffective, I requested a full refund. I sent this request to my project manager, his boss, and the lawn care manager. I was messaged back the next day by my project manager stating he would look into my request and see what the best option is. After 10+ days of no response, I ultimately filed a BBB complaint. Within a week, the project manager’s boss reached out to me to discuss the multiple problems I had had with the company (I had spoken with him on the phone before the complaint regarding my project manager’s lack of communication and had cc’d him in multiple emails with no effective assistance or response from him). He was now completely willing to help with anything he could and I was refunded my full amount for the weed program. Ultimately, he fixed a few of the problems left to fix and also offered to finish out the weed program for free. This was a better-than-expected resolution.

Given the above, these are my recommendations for any future customer of American Landscape based on my experience:
1.     Carefully discuss codes/law of the city/town/village of your home with your project manager to be sure all are considered legal within the HOA and township.
2.     If erosion blanket will be used, discuss where on the lawn it will be used. While extra careful is great, the extra $$$ and picking up stakes In the ground is not.
3.     Have a discussion about expectation of weeds. Discuss what is normal and what is not. Consider having American check the pH of their top soil that they bring in. (I was told by the company that due to the problems with my lawn, they now check everyone’s top soil).
4.     Discuss warranty of plants. I would encourage they write out what qualifies under the warranty.
5.     Buy their pavers! They have a life time warranty and getting them replaced was easy. Have confidence you will have excellent looking pavers for life.
6.     Hold American accountable to their “highest quality craftmanship and dedicated service” and “land stewardship” business moto.