THE GARDEN GIRL

Michelle was nice at the initial consultation ($75). She made several suggestions & gave me a proposal for work to be done and described how the plants would be fairly short to begin with but would eventually grow to create a nice screen (I wanted to stay around $500 for project, so she said that was as big as the shrubs could be for that price. She did the planting over a two-day period (she had to stop on first day because of rain). Before the plants were put in the ground, I told her I was concerned that one of the crepe myrtle bushes looked pretty puny and I thought it looked like it might be dying. She said dried leaves from a cold snap the night before and after awhile the plant would look better. After she was done with the planting I called her the next day and said I was still concerned that the one shrub just didn't look very good. She stopped by & snapped off a branch to show me that it was alive, but that it would defoliate and then get new leaves when we finally got some sunny days. A week later, we had had 3 sunny days and the plant looked completely dead. A neighbor and some visitors to our home had all seen the planting and said "it looks that bush is dead you should take it back to where you got it" I was too embarrassed to tell them I had paid a professional and then TOLD the professional TWICE that I was unhappy with how it looked and it was still there. So two weeks after original planting I called Michelle & she was impatient with me, told me that she had already told me we just needed more sunny days and the plant would drop it's leaves & grow new ones. I told her that I was not happy that the plant was being nursed back to health in my front yard, as opposed to at a nursery, and that I was getting upset that I had mentioned this issue four times, including BEFORE the plant went in the ground and she was not seeming to understand that I just wanted a leafy green shrub in my yard, not a defoliated one. Her answer was that she could replace the bush for $50 now, or that I could wait a few weeks for it to leaf out. So...I'm waiting to see what it looks like after a few weeks of sunny days. If the bush doesn't look good, I will call her and insist that it is replaced without a charge. However, even if it looks fine, I will have had an ugly in my yard for over a month, after having paid a total of more than $600. I'm very frustrated and angry and would never, ever recommend this person for anyone to use. The obvious answer was for her to have gotten another bush before putting it in the ground so I'd have pretty bushes in my yard RIGHT NOW. Not sometime this summer. That's why you pay a professional to do the job. This has been so rotten, and every time I go in my yard I just feel ripped off.