FOR YOUR GARDENS' NEEDS

Bret and his team are amazing!!! They are knowledgable, hard working, efficient, and friendly. Our garden always look great. I would highly recommend For Your Gardens' Needs for all your landscaping needs.

Really professional

Gardening, Weeding, Debris Hauling

In a word, fantastic! Bret was very busy so it took a little time to get him in to do the work but the final result was well worth the wait. His workers were very professional and cleaned up everything after each day. Bret has excellent design ideas for the landscaping and I couldn’t be happier with the result. And my neighbors are very complimentary on the work that was done. I highly recommend FYGN and look forward to having them back here in the future for additional projects.

went very well. Arrived when specified and did the work well.

Bret is very friendly, and very knowledgeable. We visited two nurseries to help me decide on plants, and I took a long time to decide on everything and Bret was very patient. He made a preliminary plant list, and then adapted it when I eliminated some because of allergies, and we both suggested alternatives or color changes, so it was a collaborative effort in the end. Then work was delayed because of endless weeks of heavy rainfall. Bret did not draw out a plan, but arranged the plants and pathway on the day of planting - with my input. His crew of workers were absolutely wonderful: obviously very experienced with the new, and much improved irrigation and valves they installed, very meticulous including measuring distances between plants, very hard working indeed (even trying to work a bit in the rain that week.) They put in gopher wire around each plant, some landscaping fabric near the house, and some bender board, and finally lots of my chosen mulch. Bret designed a winding pathway after I chose the stepping stones. Bret said the yard needed nothing done at all for 6 months except possibly pulling the odd weed, and he came back to view it after 6 months. I have had several compliments on it! And it is so much nicer to look at, and has only needed a little pruning here and there so far. We did go a little bit over the original estimate, as the depth of the grey stones was deeper than Bret had realized, and so more soil was needed after the crew had laboriously wheelbarrowed all the stones out into the huge hired dumpster. A couple of the plant colors I chose were not available in the end, so alternatives were delivered.

Bret de Zordo and his gardening guru's have been a Godsend. I have not had a single negative experience over the past year-and-a-half working with FYGN. From landscape design to monthly maintenance the work has been exceptional. As a Native San Franciscan, who now lives in the heart of the Marin community, Bret brings first-hand knowledge of native and non-native plants that will thrive in this area. At the same time, he understands the challenges our local wildlife presents keeping those plants thriving and surviving. Bret is a collaborator and excellent communicator. He works with you to understand your vision as his client and creates a garden that reflects your aesthetic through his creative eye. He will not let you go down a path that will bring disappointment and frustration - he is honest and forthright about what will and will not work in your garden in your particular micro-climate. His passion and respect for design in nature are evident in his work. Thank you, Bret and FYGN Crew! I love my garden!

Very well, Bret is very responsive and direct in assessment of what needs to be done. Good knowledge on what should/should not be done with steep hillside areas.

Bret was very easy to work with. He was very reliable and timely in all matters relating to the project.

Bret (the owner/operator of FYGN) is very friendly, punctual and professional. He is knowledgeable about San Francisco climates and plant-life, as well as relevant regulations (essential in San Francisco). He met with me several times (without charge) to discuss what I wanted to do with the various green spaces around the property, and was both helpfully honest about what we have to work with (given the amount of sunlight, the drought and the micro-climate of the Noe Valley area), but also worked to accommodate our goals.
We decided to start with a smaller project, which involved clearing three small overgrown squares of front "yard" between the sidewalk and the house, and planting drought resistant plants. He gave us a reasonably detailed quote (including price ranges for plants), and then met us at the local plant nursery to show us the kinds of plants that we intended to use and to solicit our feedback on color, type, etc. Once we scheduled the work, Bret and his team completed it in the amount of time allotted, and did an excellent job (with, as far as I can tell, minimal disruption to our neighbors). Our neighbors are certainly pleased with the work that Bret did (we've received multiple compliments), and we are as well. The plants look great, and so far they are doing well.
My only piece of constructive feedback is that it would have been helpful to receive (after the project was completed) some written instructions on caring for plants. Nonetheless, Bret has been very responsive in answering my follow up questions about plant care via email.
Long-story short: We will be using Bret again for future projects.

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Bret was a pleasure to work with.  He had good ideas on plants and design.  He was enthusiastic and informed.  He was also very responsive when a few issues came up.  We got his name from Angie's List and the reviews of him were an accurate guide.

Bret came out and did a walkthrough with me, he's extremely knowledgable, straight to the point and has been very helpful (and very responsive to a barrage of email from me). We had them install a new control box for our drip irrigation system, clean up our yard and remove a number of plants that were either in bad shape, or doing more harm than good. The yard is already healthier (and better looking) and we're looking forward to continued help from FYGN, highly recommended.

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We engaged Bret after our hardscaping was already installed. Probably less than ideal from an overall design perspective, but we had trouble with another landscape designer in the past, which required us to do it this way. Bret worked with this constraint well. I would say he's the kind of designer that has a vision that evolves as he goes. As mentioned by another homeowner, he didn't provide a plant plan, which caused a little bit of anxiety on my part. I had ideas about what I wanted from a plant perspective and had hoped for more collaboration between us on the final plan. That said, in the end, I got the most important plants that I wanted and the ones he chose (after taking the time to understand my aesthetic) had a lot of character and are now filling in nicely. The irrigation system and rock cover make maintenance almost effortless. And what was once an overgrown jungle of uninspiring plants when we first moved in is now our most favorite "room" in the house, one that provides us fresh veggies, lemons, avocados, apples and more!

Their price is very competitive.

After a couple of meetings and a decision to get started, Bret and his team arrived on the first day to begin demolition of our yard -- a large area of juniper -- not an easy task to remove.  The yard waste was totally cleared away.  The workers were all extremely diligent throughout that day and those that followed.  At the end of each day, the areas in the yard and adjacent ones were tidy and as cleaned up as possible.
A new garden path of decomposed granite was put in place as were several large boulders, all done without machinery.  They installed new irrigation lines to an existing controller system and added some path lighting with a new controller.  A colorful variety of plants that are low maintenance were put into place.  The yard truly went through a great transformation.
Several of the new plantings have struggled.  The first time it happened I contacted Bret and within a week's time received replacement plants that his worker went about exchanging for us.  I recently contacted Bret yet again to make several more exchanges and trust they will be done equally as well.
The installation part of the process went extremely well given the planned steps that Bret and his team obviously follow based on experience.
The 2 disappointments that my husband and I have are associated with other services that Bret states he offers:
1.  Design:  Evidently, Bret does do landscape design but doesn't provide any written plan layout to help clients visualize. For the price we paid, I would have expected Bret to provide a plant layout.  I ended up obtaining a detailed plant layout from one of his competitors (Gardens and Gables)  for Bret to use as a guide.
2.  Maintenance:  Neither my husband nor I are gardeners and were specifically looking for a landscaper who could provide us with a low-maintenance yard that they could maintain at a reasonable additional cost after implementation.  We learned at the end of the project that only certain areas of Marin County and S.F. are available for their maintenance service -- not Novato. 
While Bret is a good communicator, very pleasant to deal with, and a knowledgeable and talented landscaper with a solid work team, I can't give him the best rating possible due to the points made above.

The service was excellent, and he did a great job for us. He was very professional and very experienced. He spent a lot of time with us going over the details.

FYGN began providing our garden services in mid 2012.  From the beginning, we have been more than satisfied with the quality, quantity and price of their work.

Bret & team were great- they were able to fit me in pretty quickly and were on-time the day of the work. Bret kept me posted of the work during the day and let me know when they were finished.
They also went above and beyond by cleaning up the front of my home too. They took all debris with them, which was great.

Our front yard was an overgrown, neglected mess whose only purpose seemed to be provide tasty roses for the deer.  Bret met with me about my requirements -- low maintenance and color -- and came back with a design that met both. The plants he chose are as deer resistant as possible, and very colorful and interesting. Some I recognized and some I had never seen before. His team cleared out the old stuff and laid a lovely path down the middle of the yard, installed an irrigation system with a timer and then laid out the plants beautifully. 
It's been just a year now and I get compliments frequently on the yard. People are drawn to and surprised by all the color.  We had some challenges with weeds early on but Bret assured me that with diligent mulching it would get better and he was right. There are very few weeds coming up now so maintenance is a breeze.  His guys come in once a month to tidy up and I do very little but enjoy my front yard.
Bret is a delight to work with.  He explains things clearly, is patient with our "suggestions" and accommodates my schedule when it's necessary for us to meet.  I hope to continue the relationship and will certainly enlist his help when it comes time to give attention to the rest of the yard.

Bret is extremely responsive and engaging.  We found a time that worked for a consultation and he arrived on schedule and spent an hour looking over the property and making suggestions.  He brings a designer's eye to all aspects of the work, and explained his company's philosophy and process thoroughly.  He gave us options for a full job bid or hourly rates, and applied no pressure at all, and promised to work with us to keep costs as low as possible.  When work commenced, Bret and his crew were on time and friendly, and they did a terrific job -- property looked better than it did when we bought the house.  We will definitely be working with him on a regular basis for maintenance, and we plan to contract him for a significant redesign of our front yard.  Might cost a touch more than one of the big corporate outfits but worth every penny -- great guy, good sense of humor, great crew, and terrific quality.  Can't go wrong here!

Bret and his crew completed the work quickly, efficiently, and professionally.

The project went smoothly and professionally without a hitch. The stump removal took only few hours and the planting almost the same. Everything was professionally done and cleaned up afterwards. Bret even came by to check on the job several times during the process. These guys are the best!