W & W NURSERY & LANDSCAPING

We contacted W&W to do a complete landscaping project on a home that we had recently purchased. Jerry, the landscape designer was very nice and did a plan that we liked. We were surprised that we had to pay for the plans even though we used them to supply and install all of the landscaping. The total project was about $28,000. The first thing that we noticed was that they brought "River Loam" instead f the "blended top soil" as per their proposal. When we questioned this Ken, the owner said it was fine and it was what all of his nursery was planted in. A year later, all of the lawn area where the river loam was used, or even dumped for later use is covered with crab grass while the rest of our lawn is almost crab grass free. The second item was a "French drain" that was estimated at $300, and ended up costing $1,800. I paid this amount because I felt that they did a good job and that it was an error on Jerry's part in quoting. The third issue was a "road" that before they started was just a narrow spillway for water coming down the hill from the back of our property. This was supposed to be covered with gravel. Without asking, they widened the "road" and then covered it with gravel. Although they deny it, our feeling is that they did this to accommodate a large mulch truck that appeared to shoot mulch over the newly planted are. Of course the weight of this truck just pressed the gravel into the ground so we now have a wider spillway than we wanted that looks not much better than before. They billed us for $400 for widening the "road" which we refused to pay. The fourth issue is a wall that they built for us. The wall was supposed to be 48 feet, and we were billed and paid for 48 feet. There was some capstone that was left and we said that we had paid for it and that it should be ours. They said that we had not paid for it because the wall was only 46 feet. Of course I pointed out that we had been billed for ad paid for 48 feet. Because we had trusted them to fulfill the contract, we would have paid for 2 feet of wall that we did not receive if it hadn't been for the issue of the capstone. The final issue is the warrantee. We were told that the plants we warranted for a year, subject to the care specified on their instruction sheet. We were very diligent in properly watering and maintaining the plants as per there instructions. Several of the perennials did not survive. When I called to have these replaced we were told that since we had been given a sale price on those, they were not warranted. They pointed to a clause in their care sheet item #5 that stated that plants purchased on sale were not warranted. What they neglected to tell us was that this did not apply to plants that they had planted, but only ones that had been purchased and then planted by the homeowner. Luckily we did not take their word on this and read the fine print. They did end up replacing our plants, but not before many delays and nastiness had transpired. We feel that we paid top dollar, didn't haggle, and then were deceived in several areas. We would never deal with W&W again, and would just warn anyone who does, to insist on blended top soil and not accept river loam, check every bit of the work being done, and don't believe all that Ken tells you.