In February I set out to beautify my yard so it was no longer the eye sore of the subdivision.  I contacted several contractors and landscapers and after getting all of their quotes I settled on one, Dependable Services Inc.  They seemed very professional, came up with great a great design, and were reasonable.  Below are the pictures they provided of what the finished project would look like.

Due to the rainy spring we had they finally made it out in the middle of May.  I was on vacation when they came to do the job and I was not prepared for what I saw when I returned home.

The first thing I noticed as I drove up to my house is that the sod was mostly brown.  While I was away I had people watering and caring for my new yard and they indicated it was brown the first day it was laid. I have seen all the new houses in my subdivision have sod laid and I have never seen it in this condition.

The next thing I noticed is they completely ignored filling in the wash out in the middle of my yard and threw some rock in the middle and called this a finished job.  If you compare that to the rendition Dependable Services Inc originally provided me, it looks nothing like it.

After doing some further investigation I noticed that my property line was completely ignored in the sod installation.  On one side they missed about a two foot section all the way down the side and on the other they sodded about an 8 by 50 foot section over my property line.  Dependable Services Inc was provided a copy of my plot and my yard is clearly marked from the survey we had done when we built the home.

To top everything off, the wall that was constructed ended up being about two feet longer than it should have been and ended up extending over my property line.

I was completely shocked at the state of my yard.  Luckily at this point I have only paid Dependable Services Inc half of the money, so I wrote them an email outlining all the issues that need to be addressed before final payment.

They came out and met with me the next day and we talk about everything and they said they would fix some of the issues.  They came a few days later to fix the issues.

They filled in the wash out of my yard with more rock and it looks a lot better, but they neglected to add rock to a portion of it.  To me it still looks unfinished at this point.

They also removed some of the wall so that it is contained within our property line.  Of course it could have been done better.  I have been asked by a few neighbors if that is how they are going to leave the wall.

Now we come to the sod part.  They placed sod on the areas that were missed and now everything that was suppose to be sodded is, but the main disaster is they decided to come fix all of this on the day that it rained the whole night before and most of the morning, so the yard was very saturated.  They have pretty much trampled my sod, leaving it a muddy mess with ruts and uneven patches all over the yard from where they walked.  It looks awful.

This landscaping project by Dependable Services Inc has been a complete disaster.  I have sent another email to them listing issues that need to be addressed before final payment, but in the mean time I am left with a yard that does indeed look better than it did, but is not what I hired them to do.

I don’t think I am being unreasonable by expecting to see the results in which I was promised. Hopefully, I am not the exception to the rule. Has anyone else ever experienced a nightmarish landscaping project?