Joel Hilles Pondscapes

BE CAREFUL! We have worked with Joel for quite a few years to maintain our pond. He always seemed very knowledgeable and eager to please and did a good job maintaining the pond by opening and closing it with the seasons. With this existing rapport we began giving Joel and his workers more and more landscape work, adding landscape lights, weed management, clearing woods and paying him roughly $1,500 a day for labor only. He told us his workers were trained and given benefits, thus the daily cost of hiring. He was always willing to come back and fix any of the lighting problems we may have experienced . Installed landscape lights would go out after a rain fairly often and the weeds not always managed according to plan. But due to his good nature and willingness to try we continued to give Joel additional landscape jobs in hopes of managing all landscaping needs by one company. MISTAKE 1! The first larger job was to beautify an unused, but visible land area behind a fence where a creek ran through by adding boulders and lights. By the end of the rain season quite a few of the boulders slid down into the creek along with the lights and caused increased erosion due to the weight of the boulders and lack of proper graded installation. When asked him to rectify, he told us that there would be a cost to fix by getting the machinery back. At that point it was decided not to work with him any longer. However Joel later apologized and sent us a cake from Oakmont Bakery at Christmastime. OK, thought quality guy let's give him another chance. Had some larger landscape projects in mind. We discussed them with him and he seemed eager to please. MISTAKE 2! He planted plants and shrubs witout topsoil, built french drains with inapproriate materials, did not fix distrubed turf when using rented (does not have his own landscape basic equipment and this should have been a sign) machines, took longer than expected by having his workers wait for materials that did not arrive on time, hired many incapable workers (one guy was great Joe whoe directs and does the the work of 2 guys and makes up for the inexperienced ones Shout out to Joe, without Joe, Joel does not have landcape business, hopefully he is valued, paid well with benefits!), jobs never done on time or when promised, had mulch sit in our driveway for 2 weeks to attend to other jobs before ours was completed. SO if you are considering hiring Joel Hiles Pondscape please consider the following : 1. He does not do what he says he is going to do 2. does not seem to manage the flow of projects well to be cost efficient 3. Does not have the knowledge base beyond building and maintaining ponds to do landscape work 4. does not have the machinery and charges extra for it 5. Has a unheard of warranty on plants of 6 months you pay half if the plant does not survive 6 Please dont accept that, that is not backing your product. 6 Will not repair what is mucked up when using machinery, so one area may look better, while a new area is mucked up. 7. Wiil make you go over what you want over and over with him, then not get it right then say that is not what you said. In my opinion, he is a modern day con artist. He has no problem asking for more and more money to complete a project. Please do not fall prey to this man. There is a similar posting from other's similar experience online.