Ava Gardens Lawn Care & Masonry

I am writing in hopes of saving others from having the experience I have had with Joe Brugnone and Ava Gardens handling my landscaping needs. Joe comes across as an amiable and knowledgeable person, a professional that knows how to do his business and keep his customers satisfied. My experience was that this image does not translate well into real life practice. A few specific examples may help to explain a few of the reasons for this conclusion: - Lawn mowing sometimes scalped patches down to the roots, roughly once a month. The clippings from mowing were often blown into our shrub beds (covering the mulch), or onto the neighbor's yard. Spraying to keep weeds out of the beds was supposed to be included in the weekly lawn and bed maintenance. This was not done, and weeds easily grew in the beds. I mentioned this to Joe on several occasions. At first he was receptive, reaffirmed his commitment to customer satisfaction, and said he would take care of it. When reporting this again later in the year he characterized me as being a 'complainer', even as we walked around the yard and he manually pulled weeds as high as his knees from the beds. Twenty percent (20%) of the contracted lawn and bed maintenance visits were not provided. - Lawn treatments for fertilizing and weed management were applied so thinly as to be ineffective (green stripes in lawn, continued abundant weed growth). Only 2 or 3 of the seven promised lawn treatments took place during the year. The lawn had a sickly green / yellow / brown appearance with weeds being the greenest part of the lawn. At one point he said he did a thorough spot spraying of weeds throughout the lawn, but there was very little wilting, yellowing or dying of the weeds, which continued sprouting and growing unabated. His explanation was that weed seeds were blowing onto my lawn from neighbors, and he couldn't keep up with mother nature. A different service provider has since had no such difficulty. - Pruning of shrubs and bushes was performed in a slashing and hacking fashion, and the resulting appearance was embarrassing. Misshapen bushes with bare and flat sides were common. When I walked around the yard with Joe sharing my concerns, he said the shrubs would grow back. He also committed to doing the pruning himself next time, to ensure a proper outcome. Unfortunately, 'next time' never arrived (my requests were put off due to drought, heat, other projects, "within the next couple weeks", etc.), and the shrubs were left to become gangling and twice their normal size. In short - my lawn, shrubs and beds were in worse condition after 12 months (beginning in August 2023) of being cared for by Joe and Ava Gardens than they were to begin with. Worse yet, we paid for the year's services in advance, and are still waiting for a refund for the contracted services that were not provided. Commitments from Joe for a timely and amicable settlement have not happened. Buyer beware! **Update 2/2/25 - The negotiated amount to refund for the cost of undelivered services agreed to on 9/23/24 was paid today.

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They did a professional job and the area looks very nice.

unknown

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Very professional