The quality of the work done was highly variable: some excellent things that we are delighted with, and some things that are completely and inexcusably poorly done. Brian and his crew have serious communication issues, both among themselves and with us, their customer. Part of the issue was that Brian didn't take notes when we reviewed work to be done, which meant either that he forgot at least half of what we discussed, causing errors and confusion that frequently required rework, or we would take detailed notes and send him a long email with detailed instructions, putting the burden on us for something we were paying him to do. Brian is alternately engaging, charming and helpful, and then aloof and uncommunicative. Some of his crew were on the ball and communicative, and some impossible to deal with. Brian also made assurances to us about aspects of the job that, in hind sight, he must have known he could not deliver on. For example, he told us repeatedly that he was sure that 8 irrigation zones would cover the entire lawn and and the beds. The system that was installed couldn't cover everything adequately, in part because eight zones aren't enough. In the end, our assessment of Brian as a business man is that he and in particular, his office help, are sloppy and dishonest. We received many erroneous and inflated bills. Brian also has the peculiar habit of showing up after completing a major piece of work and requesting payment in person; no bill or itemized invoice, the amount owed is not even clearly stated when the verbal request is made; written detail is only provided if it is demanded, at which time their disarray and confusion becomes apparent. We are very happy with the basics of the construction: the design, with a few minor exceptions is great; the work that his foreman, TJ, did with raw cedar is almost a work of art. The retaining wall, stone fireplace, extension of an existing stone wall, grading, and all of the brick work for the patios and walks are also fine. He and his crew worked closely with us to get a design on all of these elements that we are very happy with, and the quality of the work is fine. We also accompanied Brian and Matt to the wholesale nursery in Westport and chose all of the major plants, which was an enjoyable experience. Almost all of the large plants that they provided were properly installed and, a year on are healthy; one red cedar died over the winter, but that isn't too bad given all that they installed (except that it is probably at least partly due to the very poor job that they did with the irrigation system.) Now to the bad parts: They took substantially longer than they initially promised. Theye started the project in early September, saying that it would be three to four weeks. By December, they had gotten the topsoil down, and in desperation, hydroseeded, saying the would finish the job in the spring, but they wanted to at least get some seed down. When reseeding in the spring, their unsupervised sub-contractor hydroseeded the vegetable garden and when asked to correct it, thy billed us for weeding it. We bought high-end lighting from him, but the installation was very sloppily done. The irrigation system, for which he charged us a premium price, was installed by an un-certified hack who didn't know what he was doing; after having them back several times to fix leaks, I had a couple of local irrigation contractors look the system over. I am having to install a new system from scratch because what they did was unrecoverable. Brian assured me that he would get four inches of topsoil down -- we have at most two inches in most of the new lawn. In the first growing season, during which we continued to retain Casey so that they would get the lawn going, they could not manage the irrigation system to get the right amount of water on the lawn -- in part because it couldn't cover all of the lawn -- the result being that the lawn is still in very rough shape. Two large and beautiful weeping yews that we had saved from the wrecking ball were reinstalled in new locations by Casey's crew. They did not handle this very well, moving them around on a skid steer and trying to install them off the bucket. That went ok for one of them, but the other one went into the hole wrong and they couldn't recover to a reasonable angle, so it got planted at an unfortunate angle, with one of the limbs partly buried in the top soil. And the rough treatment shook the very sandy root ball apart which did not help the plant. Now, ~a year later, this plant is still on life support, though we are hopeful that it will survive. They almost killed all of the espaliered fruit trees and a bunch of knockout rose plants when their crew tried to kill the weeds in the gravel driveway with roundup on a windy day -- the overspray burned the fruit trees and the roses -- they dropped their leaves in early june; he replaced some of the roses, and the rest came back, as did the fruit trees, but they didn't bear any fruit. Finally is the billing and the cost. This was an expensive project which should have come out beautifully. They charged us a premium for much of the work, then inexcusably cut corners in too many places: inadequate top soil; ridiculous irrigation system; substandard mulch (wood chips mixed with a little pine bark). Plus they could not keep track of their billing, and they sent us too many inflated bills that I had to argue them down off of. Sometimes it seemed like it was just confusion and mixed signals, other times it was hard to see how it was anything but an out right attempt to rip us off. It is too bad, because I think Brian and his key guys have a lot of talent and are quite enthusiastic about trees and some of the hardscaping that they do. But Brian shouldn't be trying to run a business; he should at least fire his incompetent and dishonest office manager and he should sub out the irrigation and lighting to someone who will do it right.