I feel a bit taken advantage of. I should have called him on the quality of the job when I saw it but was unsure about CA landscaping despite my years of experience in other parts of country and I had not had my coffee yet. I also wanted to see if what he said came to pass. Final outcome: it is a rushed job not done to expectations job despite him doing a good job on some aspects of the deal. I should have called him on it but the 4 months guarantee ended in the winter when the plants have not had a chance to grow or mature somewhat. It is 6 mos now and the results are not good. We went with the most expensive bid because the other people we contacted were not receptive to doing anything more than planting rosemary on a steep west facing hillside with about 1/3 shade, 1/3 full afternoon sun, and 1/3 dappled. We are experienced landscapers having done vast areas of tough dry areas with natives and have done done our own irrigation work in past on our old property. However, since we are new to this flora and to steep hillsides, and since we wanted it planted before the Winter rains and we were time crunched, we decided to hire out. I have waited 6 months to write a review to see how it all really turned out. I had researched plants and made a list of what I thought would work in the area. We also have deer so had to take that into account. I had to research plants because I am unfamiliar with CA natives and knew I needed deer resistant, drought resistant, natives. I also had to exclude some plants due to city banned list and wanted to encourage bees and butterflies. My research produced a list which I presented and discussed with Mr. Fogg. He seemed receptive. He also assured me that "Ceanothus Yankee Point" was deer resistant because it was blue despite my telling him that my research said it was practically the only ceanothus that is NOT deer resistant. I was also interested in carpet manzanita. He suggested a couple bunch grasses and also came up with liriope gigantea along edges in the shaded section. Liriope is often used commercially because it is cheap and fairly hardy. I agreed to some liriope along the bottom of the hill at the retaining wall in the dappled area. I thanked him for his suggestions, again told him of my reservations about Yankee Point but he insisted it was fine for deer. He calls and says that he has an opening in his busy schedule and asks if he can do the hillside while we are out of town. Should take 4 days. Fine, we say. We give him $3400 down. We return a week later at 9 PM after a lengthy travel day. He arrives the next morning at 0730 for balance. To me it is earlier because of my time zone change. We look at hillside with while drinking our first cup of coffee.. I see all the liriope covering the entire hiillside, some Yankee Point, two Julia Phelps and a couple bunch grasses. They did leave the work site exceptionally clean though. For some unknown reason that I am still kicking myself over, perhaps too early and no coffee yet, I nod and give him the balance of $3286. He is a friendly guy. I am looking at a hillside with red spray paint spots all over the jute netting that he used to help hold hill until plants take root. The red spots are for plant placement but they ended up not putting plants in those spots. I expected that paint will wear off with winter rains and be covered by plants but 6 months later still a polka dotted hillside but the paint spots are fading. He does reduce final payment because they did the job so fast that they could not get the porta potty delivered by the time job was done. Turns out the neighbors and dog sitter say that the job took 1 1/2 days total, not 4. Plants are sticking out of the hill - yes, you don't want to bury too deeply and rot the stem but they should not poke up THAT much. He assures me it is ok and best because that is how he always does it. The irrigation work is fine but was minimal to the job. Now: liriope in sun area is dying. Ceanothus is NOT deer resistant. Neither is the liriope. We put netting over the entire hillside but anything that comes up through bird netting is eaten immediately. We just removed the netting so that rosemary can have a chance at not being distorted since the rest of the plants are not going to make it through the summer except for the Julia Phelps. The rosemary is doing ok but languishing because much of it was not planted well enough into soil and soil has dropped away from it since it is on hillside. The grasses that he planted are barely coming back with only like 4 green shoots each (dormant in Winter but should be returned by now) probably also to being planted too shallow. We irrigated for many weeks twice a day and pulled back gradually. We've done TONS of landscaping with great success in much harsher conditions than these. I really think that he had time in his schedule to do the work and could only get the cheap liriope and went with it or that he does a lot of commercial and his supplier has tons of it cheap. Unfortunately the discussion about plants and placement was oral and the contract just had number of plants by size. I assumed that our long discussion about types of plants and location of iriope would be adhered to. I mentioned on that fateful morning of payment that liriope would probably not work there but, it is my fault for not insisting and for not having a specific list of plant type and number on my way out of town. He is a friendly enough guy but I do feel that I got jipped with plant selection and quality of planting. It is not but about 50% of what we talked about and the Yankee Pint thing is a sore point with me. Everything is alive but the liriope and grass are on their way out and the ceanothus is still the same size due to deer. The moral is: spell it out if doing it with Jean Fogg. 1 1/2 days of almost nothing but cheap liriope at $6600 is way too much. I will definitely be doing my own landscaping except for the large rocks in my dry river bed and my water feature. Jean Fogg will not be helping with that. Another service provider will be doing it and probably for a better price. Always remember with contractors that once the deal is made you have to be present or it is done quickly so that they can get on to the next job. And don't pay before you've had your coffee.