Caffrey Landscapes

We found Darragh on Yelp when were looking for someone to put a lawn in our backyard for our spoiled new puppy.  After getting one estimate from another contractor, we talked with Darragh, whose estimate was much more reasonable and in line with what we were expecting.  Darragh's crew did a great job and were very good about cleaning up after themselves.  And during the course of the project, we asked them to do some additional things like clearing out other plants and weeds from our yard and hooking up our existing drip system to the new sprinkler system for the grass that Darrah's crew installed. They easily were able to accommodate our extra requests. Three weeks later the lawn looks great, and our spoiled dog loves it!  We would recommend Caffrey Landscapes to anyone.

My husband was away on a trip over Father's Day weekend and I got a spontaneous idea to redo our back patio while he was gone. We live in a town house and have a very small back patio (about 12x22 feet). It had about 9x22 foot area covered by plain concrete and a 3x22 area of dirt filled with weeds. I called a couple of landscapers that I found on yelp, and Darragh Caffrey was the first one who agreed that he could do the job in the 3 day timeframe before my husband got back. I had set a top limit of my budget at $5000 and the work came in at exactly that. I'm not sure if that is a good deal or not - in my haste to get the job done quickly, I didn't negotiate. I had gotten a few estimates for the tile work before at $800 and $1200, so the labor did seem expensive to me (about $1000 more than what I expected). But I guess that is the price one pays for spontaneity and for not agreeing to the exact labor costs up front. My bad there!

The invoice breakdown was as follows:

Tile 200 feet squared.  
 Materials plus labor plus grout per foot is $21 a ft. (5 plus 15 plus 1)        $4200  
 Soil I yard of organic matter.  Plus pickup and install.                                    $250   Planting                                                                                                           $520 5 gallon plants $55 each, 1 gallon $12  
Stone edge wall Materials $300, labor $200                                           $500  
Total                                                                                                                $5470   

(I paid $5000 even)

Darragh showed up on time the next day after we spoke on the phone and we discussed my ideas. I already had a sample of some tile I selected, and he went and picked it up all of the materials for me. Some of the existing plants we decided to leave (some ivy wall cover and a jasmine plant). The rest of the design and plant selection I left up to him with the only requirement that it be done in 3 days and the price be under $5000. And that is exactly what I got. He had great suggestions and seemed very knowledgeable about plants. I wanted low maintenance because I am not a gardener. 

Overall I am happy with how it turned out and think it looks great. The workers were professional and cleaned up after the job was done. There was a little miscommunication about some large pots that I also wanted planted - they didn't do them and also didn't prune and trim the existing ivy and jasmine bush that was left. But other than that, I got exactly what I wanted and expected.