Sullivan Nursery & Landscaping

1. The partial new lawn was planted and went well.
2. The complete new lawn was planted and did not go well for the following reasons.
a. The lawn did not slope gently from the house toward the back of the lawn and creek as we were promised.
b. Not enough topsoil was used, which prevented too much of the new seed from growing like it was supposed to.
c. The topsoil wasn't appropriately screened, which was indicated by the two-inch rocks I kept pulling out of the yard.
d. Not enough follow-up care took place by the company; I ended up doing a lot of seeding and putting down topsoil on my own that I thought the company should have done. When I requested the company either do so or refund one-third of my money to make up for the time, effort, and expense that I believe I was putting into my yard the company stopped communicating with me.
e. Keep in mind that this company is no longer working as Sullivan Nursery and Landscaping; it is now a franchise of US Lawns, and probably for good reason.
f. Management does not follow through with what it says it will do. I took off work for both the lawn portion and tree portion and was glad I did. The person with whom I set up the work said she would be here for the work but then wasn't here for the seeding. If I hadn't been here, they were going to just fill in the lesser grassy areas with soil and seed instead of completely taking out the old lawn and putting in a completely new lawn as agreed upon and how the job had been priced.
g. The foreman on the job understood this, fortunately, and he made sure the entire old lawn was removed. Unfortunately, this still didn't prevent them from not using as much topsoil as they should have. At one point, I had a small pond in my yard. All they did was come in and throw more soil and seed down. I again had to go through all the same steps of care. They never checked to make sure everything was okay.
h. At one point the manager, with the lawn care guy from a lawn care company did come and look at the lawn with me. He just said that all the weeds were supposed to be there. I disagreed as the seed was supposed to be 99% weed free.
i. One of the issues with trying to get out of completely removing the entire yard was that they didn't have a piece of equipment that they should have. I said that wasn't my fault. They came back the next day after finding and renting the piece of equipment. Also, they didn't realize that an area in the back yard where a swimming pool had been had plastic under the sand to prevent weeds from coming through. This seemed to be an issue that they tried to blame on me. Again, I said it wasn't my fault, that I had hired them as the expert. If this was going to be a problem it was up to them to tell me.
3. We had planned to plant the trees at the same time. This was fine until I took a good look at the trees and saw that one was not healthy, and I would not accept it. Again, I was glad I stayed home.
a. When a new tree was delivered, I took off work to be here for it to be planted. The tree that was almost planted was not the correct one. It was not even the same leaf type: simple vs compound.
b. Thus began the wait to get the final tree planted.
c. Finally, a month later, we filled the hole with a tree.
d. A year later, I am hoping that tree gets leaves.
4. A subcontractor removed the three trees with no difficulty.
5. The grade is a C, which is an average of an F for management and administration and an A for the team that did the actual work on the lawn here at my home.
6. I contacted the Florida US Lawns home office, which, with Alex Cistone of Sullivan Nursery, worked with me to resolve the issues I detailed here. As a result of our discussions, I have upgraded my overall rating to a B due to everything being satisfactorily resolved.

It went well. I got quotes from a few landscape businesses and went with Sullivan because a friend recommended them. There were businesses that were less expensive and more expensive. They were in the middle. Alex came out and discussed what we wanted and did a few drawings. We decided to go with them and they came out and started within a reasonable time frame; I think it was 3 weeks. The came out the project took a week and they were done. They did a good job.

They were great. The price was even lower than we ever anticipated. We thought it would cost thousands more. We were so pleased with the work they did and because we had saved so much money, we had them come back and do additional work. We will probably have them come back next summer to do more work. The owner is friendly. When we call, they call right back. If we have questions, they call right back. He has stopped by the house when we've had concerned. He was a really nice guy. We have recommended them to a few people that asked who did our work. We didn't like what was there and we had asked them to make suggestions because we had never had any experience because we had always lived in the city. We asked for suggestions for what would look good but we told them that we didn't want to spend a fortune. He sent us colored pictures and descriptions of different items. We ended up going with all of his suggestions. He was excellent. We called a lot of places and some places wanted $15,000. He even sent a Christmas card that he actually wrote out himself, which we didn't expect. He name was Alex.

We put a finish deadline on the contract, which helped, as many contractors will put you off once they have their deposit. There were delays to our project due to a large commercial project that they were working on. I specified to all contractors who I received quotes from, that I wanted a mushroom-top soil mix to be put into the beds. That wasn't done. I reviewed my contact, and the mushroom-topsoil mixture wasn't on the contact. That's 50% my fault. Had issues after the project was completed with settling of the pavers. They came out and removed those bricks that were affected, they raised them up and re-sealed the grout. At this point everything looks good. I would definitely give them a try again, but I would make sure that all elements of the project that I want are individually listed on the contract! If it isn't in writing, it doesn't happen!