ALL-N-1 Landscape

Charlotte Cox, our landscape designer and project manager met with us on two initial occasions to get our ideas and present her design. Further follow up meetings took place to review the type of pots we wanted to make the fountain. Once all the decisions were made and final scheduling completed the project was completed in one day with follow up on two occasions so far to adjust the fountain and check the new plantings. We are fully satisfied and thrilled with results. Visitors to the yard are, as well, very impressed with what we have.

All-N-1 did an excellent job for us.  We had mud spots in the backyard where we could not get grass to grow after several years of attempts.  We proposed a rock patio.  Charlotte Cox (landscaper) instead did a gorgeous rock garden design that was MUCH better than anything we had envisioned.  She designed it using photoshop so we could see every rock. plant, tree in our yard before we signed the contract.  I got to pick out the boulders we used myself at Rock City.  Turned out awesome!  That was 2012. 

So we hired Charlotte again in 2013 to do other parts of the yard needing work, and to redo a front landscape we had paid another company to design for us a couple of years before - which we were not happy with.  Charlotte came up with an expanded and much more interesting design, and economically upgraded it to a beautiful sight.  We were totally pleased with their creativeness, quality of work, responsiveness to any issues.

When all was said and done and I thought back over the days, no, months of deciding to do it, deciding what to do, deciding how much to do and finally deciding who will get the job. The job in this case was a concrete paver patio plus a flower garden with a steel trellis and screening trees to border the patio.
Of all the agonizing I did before even deciding who would get the job, I really should have just gone directly with All-N-1 and saved myself sooo much grief. We did go out for three bids and All-N-1 got the job. I decided on All-N-1 for a slew of factors. First, the lady that we worked with, Charlotte, actually listened to us. She was very knowledgeable and had many great ideas. She supported our concerns and offered suggestions. Her suggestions were so spot on that it felt like we were old neighbors! When we got the proposal it took me exactly one approving nod to decide on All-N-1. I had experience with the company as they installed our underground sprinkler system and maintain it twice a year as I took out a maintenance contract when the system was installed - never regretted that move. I have had to have the system modified over the years to relocate heads and they always do a highly professional job and I get a superb sprinkler system (like new ) each year.
The patio project went a bit rough at first. We had to make some design changes owing to the sun room we had just installed and the need for the patio level to be high enough to prevent us from having to have a door landing with too many stairs. Charlotte again dove in and worked with the sun room contractor to coordinate the effort. She was here every day while the project was going on. It was a project that involved the ground preparation, level build up and sloping, three size brick random pattern install, sprinkler system head location moves to accommodate the new structures as well as a brand new zone added to cover the garden/flower/tree area with an underground drip irrigation (soaker hose) system.  John explained the new soaker system to me in depth obviously taking a lot of pride in his design. Also showed me how easy it would be to extend the soakers into other flower beds should we choose to add more in the future. I thought that was very insightful of him.
Problems? - a tiny few. One of the arbor vitae trees was a bit too close to the back side of the trellis for my comfort. I could just see me having to get back in there later in the years to try to trim the tree away form the trellis. I mentioned this to Charlotte and it was immediately taken care of by moving the tree away form the trellis a bit over a foot. Otherwise, the only problems were due to my not understanding some of the processes but Charlotte or one of here workers would always give me a full explanation so I felt smart enough to know there was really no problem.
Kudos to Jonathan the patio guy and John the irrigation guy and of course Charlotte the project manager. It ended with exactly what we wanted and with minimal anxieties for my wife and I. We highly recommend All-N-1 and will use them for all of our future landscaping needs.
Feel free to contact me if you would like additional information 913.319.6084.

I was impressed by the detailed & quick follow-up of the Landscape Architect, Troy and his genuine interest in meeting our needs not just selling us on his ideas.  The labor team was headed up by Foreman, Brian Trost and a team of professional, hardworking, respectful men. They cleaned up after themselves, did what they said they would, communicated clearly and presented themselves very professionally.  We love our new stone patio, walkway, stone stairs, mulched areas and overall ambiance of our backyard, which is simply transformed by this project!

Very fast courteous service.  Yuri fully explained what was needed and with my approval proceeded to do the work.

Landscape architect was easy to work with, very professional and provided a detailed landscape plan based on several in-depth, on-site consultations.

The project manager, Bruce Bates presented the plan to us.  His proposal sounded very sound and it seemed like he knew what he was doing.  However, while the work was being done, he was not present to oversee the project.  The foreman who did the work, said he knew what needed to be done and said things were going really well.  He said he had encountered no issues and forsaw project completion well ahead of the projected completion date.  I asked him about the liner that need to be placed below the french drain, he told me this was how he was told to do it and I needed to communicate with the project manager if I had questions.  I relayed the information to my husband to spoke with Bruce.  Bruce came over and checked on the wall and apologized for the project not being done the right way.  He said he would make sure things were done correctly and would never stand behind a job done poorly.  They had to redig the gravel and drain behind the wall the next day and replace the drain with the liner.  while working on the back yard with all the heavy equipement the inground water sprinkler was completely damaged.  Bruce had told us that it would not be a problem as they would take care of it without charges and expected some damage to happen with the equipment they needed to use. 
They then worked on the rain garden and front landscape along with the retaining wall along the driveway.  The planting in the front landscape were done without preparing the flower bed and very poor quality mulch was used (looked like recent tree trimmings).  I pointed this to Bruce, who again agreed with what had been done and said he would make sure everything was fixed before the final payment.  However, the next day when he came in he sounded like a very different person, said everything had been done they way it was supposed to and that we were just being a pain.  He said they had to charge us for unforseen expenses (several boulders had to be pulled out and hauled away from the backyard when the drain had to be redone).  He said he had to charge us for the inground sprinkler system that had to be repaired due to equipment related damage.  He was rude and was talking in a very different tone that during previous encounters with him(whe he had been very collegial).  This encounter left us very upset, however, Bruce called that evening and apologized for his behaviour.  He said, Troy (owner) was unwilling to accomodate any changes despite a poor workmanship demonstrated with the current project, "I would never put my name behind such a job"  He subsequently asked us to complete the payment and said he would give his word and get everything fixed.  We ended paying them $18,800 for a project quoted for $16,300.  He then quit answering his calls and a few months later he set us a letter saying he would file a lien on our property for not getting paid his fee for the project he completed ( we never knew he was a subcontractor).
Following receipt of the letter, I called Troy and Dmitiri and told them what I had received.  They said it was wrong and that Bruce no longer worked for them.  Dmitiri also told me that Bruce had sent a similar letter to another of their clients.  They told me I should not worry about it and that I should just wait and watch.  I contacted my lawyer, who lawyer advised us that Bruce had no grounds to file a lien and since we had documentation of the payment made to All-N-1 we had nothing to worry about and that I should try to work with All-N-1.  I subsequently contacyted both Troy and Dmitiri (I have email exchanges with them to document this as well).    I also voiced my issues with the poorly done job that  and asked them to atleast see what I was dealing with.  Troy came to the house and told me that he would get everything taken care of once the weather got better (02/2012).  I did let him know that I was upset with the way our project was handled and would go to the consumer protection service, BBB and the Fox 4 news if they did not keep their word. 
The yard was such an eye sore, with the kind of work they had done they obviously did not want to put their logo/ yard sign either.  Troy refused to keep his word and later sent me an email saying that he would address only a small portion of the work only, if I signed a waiver.  I was done with him, he was rude and unprofessional.  I hired a different landscaper and had them fix the front landscape so I did not have to see the eye sore daily and be reminded of my nightmare with All-N-1.  The plants/shrubs they planted all died,  I had start from scratch. 
I would never recommend this company even to my worst enemies!  They were very unprofessional, rude and deceptive throughout the process!

Troy did a fantastic job of explaining our options and the crew went above and beyond our expectations for the finished product. The project included the installation of a 550 gallon cistern off of the back of our house which has already caught the eye of several of our neighbors. All of the materials used for our project were professional grade and installed with an expert irrigation specialist. The most impressive thing to us was how easy it was to talk and work with everyone on the team to get everything just the right way. When the job was completed everything was cleaned up and they left our house looking better than ever.

I originally contracted with All-N-1 in the winter of 2010 to discuss an overall landscape plan for my home.  The individual I worked with on the plan was prompt and responsive and had great ideas.  I paid $450 for the plan which was to be credited against any future work I had done with the company. 

At the end of  February 2010, when we decided to move forward with the plan's lawn renovation, the designer referred me to the owner, Troy, who was in charge of those services.  Despite multiple attempts to contact Troy over weeks, it was the end of May before Troy responded.  By that time, I had contracted with another company for the work.

In June 2011, I contacted All-N-1 again, mostly because I still have the $450 credit with them, to see about putting in a retaining wall.  Troy was responsive this time and came out and met with me almost immediately.  However, the meeting was a disaster.  He was downright rude and insulting about my ideas.  The quote I finally received was a mess.  It was a line item quote.  The actual work I had requested the quote for was squeezed in at the very top (not even on a line) as an after thought and then thousands of dollars of services which I explicitly stated I did not want were included.

I had requested quotes from 2 other local companies who are both well respected with a well documented body of work.  Both of them were a fraction of the price All-N-1 quoted.

I was willing to let it go at that, but Troy would not let it drop.  He sent me emails and called me repeatedly when I told him I was going with another company.  In one email in particular, he told (and I quote) "If you want the cheapest work, please call [name removed] landscaping and they will slop a RW in quickly....but it may lean or even fall over like a number of RWs I have had the pleasure of replacing due to poor workmanship, lack of knowledge and proper training and management."  Here's the kicker.  The company that he named, I've never even heard of and it certainly wasn't one of the companies I got a quote from.

It galls me to just lose the $450 I paid All-N-1 for the design fee, but at this point there is absolutely no way I would have them perform any work for me.

They were very professional. They said they would get out to us when they could and they came out within a week. They had the utility companies come out to check for lines that may be affected and I thought that was very professional. I would recommend them because I thought their work was good. They took care of a drainage problem with the previous wall and they put the correct footing in so I am very pleased. They were more pricey than other estimates that I received.

This company came out and did an estimate and they were very cordial and explained what they were going to do and so I decided to hire them. They said they would do what was necessary to get pump to working order including cleaning out the drain, installing gravel, installing new pump, etc. The first day they were supposed to be there they were late and the "supervisor" of the job didn't show up until he was at least 4 or more hours late. I was given one excuse by him and a completely different excuse by another member of his team. This company required 50% up front payment which I wrote them a check. They lost that check and I had to put a stop payment on it and write another one (which I deducted the cost of the stop payment from what I owed them) The two that were working left the job and said that was all they could do for the day and then the supervisor showed up and noticed that there was much more work that could be done and had them come back. They finally got the job finished and I had some concerns about how the design would hold up and they assured me that it was a highly effective design and would work fine. Approximately two weeks later after one of the heavy rains I noticed that the pump was still running and had not shut off and the lid to the well that the pump was in was cracked from the pressure of the gravel and screen that they had put on top of it to screen out leaves and sticks. I called the company and they said they would come out to fix it the next week. I had another company out that was doing some other work for me and they said that the well was poorly designed and that the slope of the gravel and the weight of the gravel was way to heavy for the cheap plastic lid to withstand. The week that they were supposed to come out and fix the pump came and went and I called Troy the owner who told me that Anthony had came out to look at it and was 100% sure that someone had run over it with a car tire and refused to fix the problem. I called Troy back and asked him to personally come look at the problem because there was no way physically possible for anything to have ran over the lid since it was almost a foot below the surface with all the landscaping rocks around it. He again stated that it had to have been ran over said the lid was strong enough for a person to stand on (which isn't true as shown in the picture below) and that it had to have been ran over. He offered to come out and fix it but only if I would pay him more money. I told him he was ridiculous to think that I would pay him any more money to fix a problem that his company caused due to poor design.

A crumbling patio against the house. Very shoddy work in which they will not return my calls or emails. The first year, before it started to crumble, they came out and took pictures of it for their website. They haven't asked to do that for three years because they realized what was happening to the patio. Patio is becoming separated from our house. There is a two inch gap between the base of our deck, where it used to meet the patio toward our house. Some bricks are sinking into the ground. The main step, which we use to go outside, is sinking and crumbling into the ground. They said they had some special method that would keep grass and weeds from growing in the patio. That was another lie. This has been a nightmare and they will not return my emails or calls.

A crumbling patio against the house. Very shoddy work in which they will not return my calls or emails. The first year, before it started to crumble, they came out and took pictures of it for their website. They haven't asked to do that for three years because they realized what was happening to the patio. Patio is becoming separated from our house. There is a two inch gap between the base of our deck, where it used to meet the patio toward our house. Some bricks are sinking into the ground. The main step, which we use to go outside, is sinking and crumbling into the ground. They said they had some special method that would keep grass and weeds from growing in the patio. That was another lie. This has been a nightmare and they will not return my emails or calls.