Galati Landscaping Inc.

The wall was built as three separate walls, rather than one integrated wall.  I was assured this was not a problem. Wall started to separate within a 30-60 day window. Vito (the owner) examined the wall, and a crew returned to fix it.  This all happened before winter set in.  In discussing the wall with the crew, they acknowledged that it was not built correctly, but they were putting it back the same way as per Vito's instructions.  The repair of the wall basically involved removing the top 3-4 layers of the wall and re-laying them with some type of additional glue between the stones.  Wall began to separate again after a few months.  Spring rains in early March completely washed out the footing of the wall, and washed the foundation material as well as the material around the base of the wall all over the driveway.  I contacted Galati's and left many messages for Vito, but was unable to get a return call.
He finally showed up at the house the week of March 19th 2012, while I was out of town (information I specifically left when leaving messages with people at Galatti's Nursury).  My daughter saw him outside in our driveway, and my wife spoke with him.  He promised a crew to fix it.  After several weeks, I began to leave phone messages again, unable to get Vito to speak with me.  I finally got a phone message on April 9th from Vito, saying the crew would be here that week to fix the wall.On Friday, the 13th, one guy showed up.  I showed him what needed to be done, and he told me that he had been instructed that it was a couple hours work for one man.  He immediately saw that the job was much bigger and he would not be able to do it himself.  While I was standing next to him, he received a call from Vito.  The phone was turned up quite loudly, and I could overhear much of the conversation.  I heard the man express the work that needed to be done, and I heard Vito tell him that he knew the wall was not built properly in the first place.  After he got off the phone, the man told me that Vito was sending him to another job, and a larger crew would be here the following week to fix the wall.
I finally received a call from Galati's, (not Vito) later on in the week telling me a crew would be there on Monday the 23rd.  It rained on the 23rd, and I received a call from Galati's (not Vito) at about 9 a.m. telling me the crew would not show up that day because of weather.  April 24th was a clear day, but no crew showed up in the morning.  I called Galati's at about 9:30, and was told Vito was on the phone and would call be back.  He did, and on that phone call he told me that it was at 8:30 that morning that he was made aware that this job required extensive work.  He told me that he had been building walls for 20 years and never had anything like this happen, and didn't know what he needed to do to fix the wall.  He told me that he needed time, and said that he could send a crew sometime in mid June, and would send me a letter saying he would do the work. I expressed to Vito that I did not believe he only knew about this that morning.  I told him that I had overheard his comments about the wall, and knew that his employee had told him about the state of the wall when he was here.  I also expressed my concerns about not being able to get in touch with him, the lack of returned calls, the no-shows from the crew.  I told him that I had given him plenty of time to address the problem, and he had not met any of the previous obligations that he had made to me.  I wanted the wall fixed.  Vito become increasingly agitated,  saying he didn't want to go over "past history" and wanted to move forward.  He started yelling at me on the phone at one point, saying I was beating him up, and acting like his ex-wife.  He said I should sue him if I wanted, and then said he had to call me back and hung up on me.
After a month, with no call back, my wife called and spoke with a nursery employee, who knew exactly who were were and was shocked the problem had not been resolved.  We received a call back telling us the work work be done some time in June.  One day the crew just showed up and started working without even knocking on the door.  I had to stop them so that we could get cars out of the driveway.  They spent two days rebuilding the wall.  They dumped construction material in the back of my yard, the workers urinated in the back of my yard, and when they needed additional dirt for behind the wall they dug it out of the back of my yard!  I was just glad to see them gone.  I had contacted an attorney but was advised the amount of money involved would not be worth the expense of going after them, so I felt at the mercy of this horrible company.   I waited this long to write a review because I was afraid of sharing this information until they were completely gone from the project.
I would advise staying away from this company at all costs.  They clearly don't know anything about engineering or construction, have no respect for the home and work site, produce shoddy work, and don't communicate with the home owner.

They did a beautiful job. There was one problem. I called them and they came out to fix it right away. They wanted to make sure it was right and that we were happy.  They were very professional.

MR. VITO GALATI PROMISED ME A PROFESSIONAL DESIGN OF THE ENGLISH STYLE GARDEN BUT NEVER BOTHERED TO PROVIDE A DESIGN OR DISCUSS DETAILS ABOUT TYPE AND SIZE OF THE PLANTS I'D PREFER. MOREOVER, HE NEVER GAVE A PRICE FOR THE JOB. HE SIMPLY PLANTED THE WHOLE YARD AND THEN TOLD ME HOW MUCH IT COST. I TRIED TO NEGOTIATE THE PRICE BASED ON THE PLANTS THAT I RETURNED AND STILL WANTED TO EXCHANGE. HE DIDN'T GIVE ME THIS OPTION. HE ALSO FAILED TO PROVIDE A COMPREHENSIVE MAP OF PLANTING AREA WHERE ALL PLANTS WOULD BE IDENTIFIED. MR. GALATI WAS RUDE, UNPROFESSIONAL AND TOOK ADVANTAGE OF ME WHO TRUSTED HIS NURSERY REPUTATION BASED ON THE ANGIE'S LIST REPORTS. I DID NOT REALIZE THAT THE GALATI NURSERY IS A FAMILY BUSINESS THAT INCLUDES TWO OTHER LANDSCAPING DESIGNERS. WHEN I CALLED THE NURSERY, I GOT MR. VITO GALATI AS AN ONLY CONTACT RESPONDING TO MY CALLS. THE OTHER OWNERS OF THE NURSERY WERE ASHAMED OF HIS BEHAVIOR BUT WERE AFRAID TO INTERFERE WITH MY DEALINGS WITH MR. VITO GALATI.

VERY NICE WORK. PLANTS HEALTHY AND DOING WELL.

THEY WERE VERY POLITE. THEY MAINTAINED THE DELIVERY SCHEDULE. REPLACED THE TREES THAT DIED THE FOLLOWING YEAR.