Black Diamond Landscapes Inc

Fabulous. Although pricey, their service is over the top. They always mow on schedule, and do little added extras, like edging the flower beds. But the two biggest and unexpected services were when we hadn't gotten to cutting back our overgrown perennials in the late fall -- a job we hate but which has to be done -- they did it for us. And when our two flower beds were badly overgrown with weeds because of some extended vacation time, they weeded them for us. Snow removal is equally good; they come in a timely fashion, and use snow blowers and shovels as well as a plow so the job is always need and clean (a previous provider would use a plow only, and leave and inch or two of packed snow which could then melt and refreeze. And a few years ago when we had record snows in February and lots of roofs were in trouble from the weight -- it was then that roofers wouldn't get to you for weeks if you called -- we called B.D. and they had a crew out in two days, and cleared the entire roof of several feet of heavy wet snow. They are not cheap, but if you are looking for great and reliable service they are well worth the cost.

They are very good at what they do. They take very good care of the property. They are very prompt and do lots of stuff and do it very well. Two reservations, one is they are pretty expensive and their billing practice. They send a bill with each service instead of monthly billing. It could be better. I would use them again.

unknown

I have been receiving excellent service from Black Diamond for about three years.  They come as soon as they can, which may not be exactly when I need them, but snow removal is hard to schedule.  They were so valuable to have during the winter of 2015 and dug me out of all the blizzards. The guys who run this company are conscientious and very fair.

unknown

Joe was very helpful and professional.  We ordered the wood and he was ready to deliver even before we needed it - even at a busy time of year!  On the scheduled date he arranged to meet our early delivery time, showed up as planned, and delivered the wood.  The entire experience was easy.  Highly recommend them!

Last year (2014), I was very happy with the service provided and even though they were more expensive than my last company, I thought the quality was worth it. I received a letter this spring from Black Diamond stating that they would be performing the same services for me this season unless I notified them otherwise. Because I was so happy last year, I looked forward to them doing my Landscaping this year. Unfortunately, this year of the service went downhill. The spring cleanup was not satisfactory, as the crew left trash that had blown into my yard in the yard, they did not lead all of my beds, the detaching of the lawn with a haphazard at best and the layer of mulch they spread was very thin.

I noticed after the first bill arrived that the amount seem to be very high. I assumed it was a mistake with black diamond's accounting until the next bill arrived for the same amount. I wrote to Joe, the owner after this to let him know that the amount of my bill was higher than last year. He told me that they had raised the rates and that my weekly service was now $57, up from $49 per week the previous year. This is the first time I had been notified of any rate increase at all. If the company had told me at the beginning of the season and they would be increasing rates by this much, I would not have continued by service. Instead, I feel like the company was very deceptive in increasing the price without alerting me first. I explained to Joe that we had a contract that was to be the same services as last year and because he had not notified me of the price increase, I was not going to pay anything extra. He told me that his crew spent an hour a week on my yard and that he was only making $6 off of each cut. I work from home and see the crew every week. They are here for a maximum of 20 minutes each week including off loading and reloading equipment and mowing my lawn. The time he tried to tell me they were here was absolutely false and again, I feel like the practice of the business is deceptive. Joe has chosen not to honor the rest of the contract and his crew stopped showing up at my house.

I gave Joe every opportunity to set things right and he chose not to follow through with the contract we had both agreed to. If he wanted to change the terms of the contract, he should have let me know and writing ahead of time and could have avoided this whole mess.

Ok

It went great.
Joe was very nice and responsive on the phone.
I had a lot of dirt in backyard that I needed to get rid of to make way for a fence. It was hard work, and Joe's team banged it out very fast. They were very nice and professional. It was definitely a fair price, i'm very grateful I had someone to help.

They were with me for about three years.

An unscheduled fall clean up caught me off guard and therefore, I would like them use written contracts to make sure both they and I are expecting the same services.

Joe and his team do wonderful work. Black Diamond has done a number of projects for us over the last couple of years and we are always pleased with the responsiveness, attention to detail, quality and value. I highly recommend Black Diamond for any landscaping work you may have.

Caught guys standing around doing nothing. Talking on cell phones. Spent hours performing the work when the new landscaper I hired was done in under an hour with less crew. Spoke with the owner and he defended his crew even when I told him I caught them hiding in my backyard and talking on cell phones and sitting.

Was in the bind this year as my local wood distributor did not sell and deliver the wood we have come to rely on. Called Joe on a Friday afternoon and got the wood delivered the next day. They were extremely professional and honest.
Would definately consider them for future work like landscaping, pruning etc.

Black Diamond responded quickly and efficiently to my request for an estimate for snowplowing. They provided me with a detailed proposal and quickly answered many questions for me. I plan to hire them for Winter 2013/14.

He had plowed for us in the winter. He has been mowing our lawn and making recommendations on what needs to be done around our yard. He's been great. He's a young gentleman and just starting out. He's only been doing this a couple of years. I like the fact that he's young and just starting out. We like to help new people. He's been very good with his recommendations. He's been punctual. It's been a good experience so far.

aq

I arranged a month and a half in advance to have the work done as close as possible to a certain week. Joe ended up starting a full month late. I tried calling and emailing during this month and got no response. Was about to demand my deposit back when he finally called and said he would start on the following Wed. Then on Tues he called and said it would be Fri. Then on Fri. he called and said it would be the following week. At least he was calling at this point but this was very annoying. Once he was on the job he was reasonably responsive but overall communication was poor.
The quality of the job was generally very good but there were some problems. The stucco job was good, though I had to have him come back to do a piece that had been missed. The granite step repair and patio repair were done very well. The landscaping went pretty well, though in one case the original dirt from a large garden bed was removed as requested but then they did not replace with new dirt before installing the raised beds on top, leaving the beds a foot down from the rest of the yard. This issue was addressed when I told Joe about it. The lawn work was OK - however I have several spots in the back yard where the grass has died due to fertilizer burn, and sod was installed in the front yard without asking me first (I had specified it to be seeded), and while it looked great for a day, they did not water it as I requested while they were working there on a hot day and it was brown when I got home that evening. It has since bounced back after a few weeks of heavy watering - now it looks great and probably much better than seeding but as it was kind of pricey I should have been asked first.
I would say the quality of the work was pretty good overall, and once the job was started Joe was responsive to concerns, but prior to the start he was not responsive and the delay in starting the job was too long.

Head of company, William Pantazis, was available, knowledgeable, able to listen, and willing to work to achieve my goals. His workers were hard-working, polite, helpful, and willing to go beyond the call of duty. His price was very reasonable, much less than others in the profession.

Joe came to my home to discuss what I wanted done. During the sinter of 2011-2012, there wasn't much snow, but he was responsive when I phoned during the one relatively big snowfall. My contract with Black Diamond specifies that they will start clearing after 3 inches of snow. One time, they cleared a very small amount of snow (maybe an inch) by mistake, and did not charge me for that.

I like them very much. They come in with a bobcat and actually remove the snow rather than just pushing it around. They hand shovel your sidewalk, too. They gave me a reasonable estimate for doing some landscaping work for me in the future, too.

Amazing!!!!! Joe and his team are miracle workers. I can't think of anything too fabulous to say about them. We hired another landscaper for what we needed this past summer before stumbling across Joe and it was a horrible experience. This previous landscaper had promised us that she was capable and confident in hard scaping, which was the bulk of what we needed done. However, her design ideas had us nervous from the get-go, mentioning wanting to put oak trees in front of our front windows, which would eventually grow tall and block out our light, and wanting to put ivy and shrubs all over the entirety of the rest of our lawn that didn't make flat. As there portion of lawn to be flattened still left QUITE a lot of lawn left over afterward, we were unsettled. We wanted to be able to walk across and use the rest of our lawn too. just because it had a slope to it didn't mean we didn't want to be able to walk on it. At some point after we had hired her to come up with a plan for us, she had admitted to my fiance that actually she was new to hard scaping. Our unease grew considerably, but we had already hired her so at least we could see her plan when she was finally able to lay it out for us. At the unveiling of her plan, it became more clear to us than ever before that she had no experience hard scaping, as it took her several moments to realize from our polite confusion that the hard scaping plan she had laid out was physically impossible. at this point she decided to forget the plan she had just spent weeks drawing up for us entirely and began free-forming ideas on the spot. It is our great regret to have listened to her explanations in the beginning that you had to pay your landscaper for her plan before you could even see the plan, since that was the large part of what she did. She was a one woman show that would have charged us more to give us less as she contracted out for everything. Needless to say, we never were given our money back when we politely thanked her for all her work but had decided to go with someone else, AND we were subjected to an extremely impolite and unprofessional email to boot.
Joe was a breath of fresh air in comparison. When he first came to meet with us and took a walk in our back yard, already he was spouting excited visions of all that it could be and the potential it had and EVERYTHING he said was just EXACTLY what we had wanted, or didn't realize until that moment that we wanted. The trees he wanted to plant and the places he wanted to plant them were perfect. He went into detail about irrigation and how he would direct the water away from the house, putting in piping behind the retaining wall and utilizing the hard scaping and dry wells. We could see the picture he painted and it was everything we had wanted. He had no sense of needing to HIDE his ideas until we had paid him for them. he told us exactly what he was thinking. And he has so much experience doing all of this, I didn't feel like i needed exact measurements and plans from him, i was confidant in his capability. Every step of the way he was in contact with us, making certain everything was where we wanted it before commencing with something he couldn't take back. I didn't feel nervous. I didn't feel the need to watch everything he did. I knew he would do it perfectly and he did. Even my neighbors commented on the rapidity with which they were able to get so much done. One month. They did a HUGE amount of work in one month. Almost every day they were here because I had told them my father's birthday was in august and I was having a large number of my family over for a birthday/retirement party cookout. They worked tirelessly. You wouldnt recognize my back yard now to see it. He was understanding about budget. We discussed prices always before starting work. He had me pay in installments and was understanding those times that i was only able to pay most of an installment and he had to wait until the next week before i could pay him the rest. He is friendly, easy to get along with, professional, knows his stuff, and is obviously excited about what he does. He loves creating. That is why he is doing my patio now, a second project, and is working just as tirelessly though the weather is getting colder.
I will never work with anyone else again for my homes outdoor needs. I'm hiring him again in the spring to do the front yard. He does snow removal and yard maintenance too!
And when I had legal issues over a land dispute with my neighbor, Joe was sympathetic and understanding and invaluable in his advice. And when my neighbor came out of her house and verbally abused one of his employers when i was not home for 20 minutes regarding said land dispute, he took it in stride and was far more understanding about it than i could ever have hoped for or expected. He waved away my apologies and told me he understood tensions could get high in these situations. He wasn't mad. He didn't hold a grudge. He even said he would still help them out with their snow removal issues if they needed him. He is so easy-going and amiable. I can not recommend Joe or his crew enough. Everyone in his crew is polite, pleasant, and respectful. They clean up after themselves. They don't leave trash around. And Joe always has new ideas for things he could do to make your home look even better. It's like having someone around who is just as invested in your home as you are. And when they had to move heavy machinery across my lawn after already laying down the sod, they were very careful to use boards for the machines to travel over so as not to harm the grass. And he installed a sprinkler system that takes care of itself. I don't have to do a thing!
I could go on and on forever, but you get the idea.
I'm getting married in my back yard next summer, it's so beautiful now we both think its the perfect location, and we have Joe to thank for that.

Overall it went well, and the job when done was better than average, but they delayed it once, and then forgot to do it the second time, so it was actually finished about a month after I requested it done, thus the low punctuality score.

A promising beginning steadily deteriorated into ineptitude and simple rudeness. As of today Thursday the 26th of June I am firing Black Diamond Landscapes. Here is why. We repeatedly called to request spring clean up. We have no spring clean up. We then asked at least 6 times for the garden to be weeded. No weeding has been done. I paid $160 dollars per week for 15 minutes worth of mowing. They never returned our phone calls. To sum up, Bland Diamond Landscapes initially put its best foot forward but ended up grievously disappointing us.