Warren's Outdoor Living

Beautiful job. Handled very professionally.

.

unknown

unknown

They are an excellent company. If we are going to have the work done, there is no question and we will use them. They are probably the top landscaping company. What they proposed to do would have been beautiful. They do fabulous work. They are very nice people to work with. The gentleman who came out was very pleasant and very businesslike. He was very professional and very knowledgeable. We may call them back in spring and have them do another quote for us. We definitely wouldn’t have any problems working with them. We are very familiar with their work. They came upfront and gave us a quote.

I had already spoken to a couple places but was not satisfied with their ability to design a beautiful landscape.  So I was excited to find that Warrens had a designer on staff and was very pleased with pictures online.  
Lee came out in early Dec to talk to us about the overall project.   In that meeting, I told him that I had a tree with fire blight which must be treated while the tree is blooming (in Jan).  He said they could treat it and he would get back to me.   Shortly after that, I spoke directly with the designer Ryan, and was very excited to moved forward; however, I was going to wait until after the holidays to start.  But, Lee never got back to me about the tree and now the tree is starting to bloom.  I called yesterday and explained to Tasha about the urgency of getting the tree treated immediately, and Lee still didn't get back to me.  I called again today and Tasha informed me that they would need to schedule a referred arborist who would charge $150 just to diagnose the problem (I already know that it is Fire Blight!).   Not only that, but it is too small a job for them to even treat the tree once it was diagnosed.  Excuse me?   I had just made an appointment with the designer to begin this massive project with them!  And, by the way, they had already decided that I would not be able to deal with the designer that I had already spoken to and he was the reason I was going to use them to begin with.
All of this caused me to rethink using them at all.   I should have checked Angie's List first, but now I see that they have few good reviews, despite their high fees.  I was perfectly willing to pay high fees for excellence and service, but now, I think I am back to square one.

Initially, we were thrilled with the results.  My review at that time would have been all A's. The transition was amazing.  We encouraged Warren's to send prospective customers to see our yard.  There were a few initial problems but in any project the size of ours, there will be problems.  How the problems are resolved speaks volumes about the contractor.
Early on we realized that the pondless water didn't seem to have an adequate underground reservoir.  Warren's brought in a water feature specialist who confirmed the problem.  The feature was rebuilt with a larger reservoir.
Over the winter a number of other problems began to appear.  About 90% of the shrubs in the back yard died.  The low voltage landscape lighting failed.  The composite deck began to swell and buckle.   In late spring it was time to clean the leaves and pine needles out of the water feature.  As I began that process I realized the the feature had river cobble as much as a foot deep in some places and a minimum of eight inches elsewhere.  That meant that a huge amount of rock had to be removed to clean out the stream.  After removing all this rock I then realized the the Aqua Blocks which provide the structure for the underground  reservoir were assembled incorrectly the last time the water feature was rebuilt and had collapsed.  
At this point (early June, 2014) I prepared a written list of all our problems and delivered it to Warren's office.  It was nearly a month before anyone from Warren's even called.  This review is being written in mid September.  To date the water feature has once again been rebuilt and the landscape lighting has been repaired.  We've learned (from a Warren's staffer) that the plants provided for the back yard were not appropriate for the amount of shade that we have.  We've also learned that the composition decking they installed was not the correct product for our application and it was installed incorrectly.
I am confident that Warren's will eventually take care of our problems but I just don't know when.  The replacement plants were ordered weeks ago and at 19 months into this project (and four months after written notification) here we sit with a yard full of dead plants.  They have also agreed to replace the deck, and to be fair, they are waiting on me to decide what we want to use.
I had planned to wait until the job was finally done before reviewing but yesterday I began cleaning out another "dry stream" bed near the driveway to try to see why so many weeds continued to grow in the bed of river rock.  What I learned was once again we had a bed of cobble nearly eight inches deep and it was full of mud.  Once I got all the cobble and mud out of the bed I then realized that the landscape cloth used to separate the stream bed from the raised flower beds covered only about 75% of the bottom of the bed and absolutely none of the sides next to the raised bed.  The result is that every time it rains or the sprinkler system runs there is nothing to prevent the dirt from migrating into the rock - which is exactly what happened.  And so another weekend cleaning up a mess that should have never happened.
I think Warren's is very capable of doing amazing work but I believe that they simply have more work than they can say grace over.  In our case this has resulted in inadequate supervision, too many shortcuts and inadequate followup to resolve problems.  I will follow up with an update once the job is finally finished.  I fully expect everything to be done well but it will very difficult for me to ever overcome the distaste I have from this experience.

Warren's merged with Arborcare who had offered an Angie's List Deal which I purchased for $200 for $400 worth of work. Warren's said they did not know about the offer so I sent it to them Then, I had Angie's List send it to them again. I've called for many months to try to scheadule the work. They have had many reasons for not scheduling the work including 1. Frankie had to have a root canal  2. Frankie's toilet was broken so she had to go home to meet the plumber  3. The arborist is sick 4. I must purchase an additional $1000 of services to make their trip to my house worthwhile. 5. they are going to get back to me when they can schedule it.

I believed they would do the work of trimming my trees laying on my roof before hurricane season. Doesn't look like they will do it. Every time there is a storm my tree branches scrape my roof. I believed they would be trimmed back many months ago. They do not return calls. When I do get to talk to someone they want proof of the Angie's List deal over and over again.  

When the arborist was with another company, the services rendered were great and I was completely satisfied. Now that he is with Warren's, the communication between arborist and crew is flawed: the crew missed the first appointment day, they came the second appointment day but only worked for a few hours and didn't finish. I was not notified that the job wasn't going to be finished that day and came home to a shock - not only was the work incomplete but the wrong tree was trimmed. I had to notify the arborist that the work had not been completed since the crew hadn't notified me or him. The third appointment was also missed because the appoint time was not enforced and the crew did not show up on time, despite mine being their first appointment of the day. I am giving them a "D" because the crew did not finish the job. However if Warrens had attempted to try to fix the situation, I would have given them an "A" and would still recommend them to others.

Warren's supplied us with a detailed estimate up front that stipulated all the work to be done.  They arrived at the job site when they promised and did everything they were hired to do.   The grass and plants they added were healthy and green.   The raised flower beds looked fantastic.   The owner, Dean Warren, personally took care of the job and was very professional.