Doug's Landscaping

I had a completely different experience than the other reviewed. Doug was incredible and did an amazing job. I hired him for several projects, including general landscaping, tree removal, and area clean up, but the biggest project I hired him for was the removal of a decaying retaining wall and installation of a brand new one. Doug kept me in he loop at all times, kept a clean work site, was completely professional, and did an amazing installation job. Yes, he works alone, but I look at that as an advantage. First, he is a perfectionist and laid every stone himself. Second, his price was much cheaper than other quotes I received because he is not paying employees. The wall, which is 90 feet long, was a huge undertaking and I could not have asked for a better job. I also had him plant trees on my property. He comes by every other day to check on them and water them -- not many contractors care that much. I highly recommend Doug and have already hired him for new projects. The final point I will make is that many of the contractors I have either contacted or hired are non-responsive, do nto keep me up-to-date, or outtight lie. Doug is the complete opposite.

BUYER BEWARE!!! First I want to say that the owner of this company is a con man from downstate New York, he has moved up north and takes advantage of people that he thinks arent as smart as himself, he constantly talked negatively about the community and his neighbors. I dont know if he has any other employees because he was the only person to work on my project. So it was a much slower process than anticipated. He showed up to our house to do an estimate of work and after a few days he got back to us with a quote. We decided to use him as he is local and we believe in supporting local small businesses. The day he started the work on our retaining wall he completely changed the design of what we had talked about originally, all while my wife and I were in the hospital expecting our first child. After talking to him about it he convinced me that it was the way to go and would look amazing, I trusted him as he is the professional. The design he came up with is definitely nicer than what I was expecting originally but the quality of the work is sub par. Not a single wall is level or plumb. One of the retaining walls is leaning forward and every time I talked to him about it, he either told me it was fine or gave me another excuse, he even went as far as to blame it on the quality of the materials. He definitely does not know how and is not qualified to install Cambridge Wall Stones or any Cambridge product. I saw how he had made a few mistakes from me just watching videos on the website, I actually had to tell him that that isnt the right way to do it and he told me that this is the way it has always been done. He even told me that he couldnt install the capstones properly because the his hydraulic block cracker would just demolish the capstones, now if this is the case why is no other contractor having the same issues, and wouldnt the manufacturer make adjustments to their product so they could be installed properly. When he finished the wall and steps he didnt even level the ground around them, leaving them in some places 9 inches low on soil, when I asked if that was how he was leaving it he said yes, I asked how am I supposed to mow the area he said that his vision was to fill it with mulch and plants, I told him that wasnt what I wanted but he left it that way anyways. Another aspect of the job was Cambridge Paver stones for a sidewalk. The day he was going to start he talked to me about changing the design that we agreed on originally and I told him no that I want my sidewalk to have curves but he insisted that them being straight would look better, I again told him no and he went with the original curved design. He needed to level the sidewalk from the garage around to the front of the house and to the back deck as well. The walkway starting at the garage and going about 20 feet it dips 4 inches this is where it splits to go to the back and also around to the front like a fork in the road. From this 4inch dip it raises 2 inches to the front steps which is still 2 inch lower then the garage. Also from the 4 inch dip it drops another 5 1/2 inches to the back steps which makes it 9 1/2inches lower than the garage. He did give me a warranty on his labor and I have called him to fix some of his work but when his work is so far below any kind of standard it is pointless to even have him try to fix his sub par work with more sub par work. I have been able to hide a lot of his subpar work with planter boxes and garden decorations, but still the wall that is leaning is going to have to be manually fixed.