Answers to commonly asked questions from the experts on Thumbtack.
How do I find a gardener?
To find a good gardener near you, compare top-rated pros online. Read their profiles to find out what their specialities and list of services are. For example, do they offer:
Mulching
Lawn maintenance
Trees and shrub removal
Trees, shrub and flower planting
Weed removal
Etc.
Also, read their customer reviews and inspect photos that showcase the gardeners’ work. And contact several gardeners near you to compare prices and decide who’s the best fit.
How often should a gardener come?
How often your gardener should come depends on what you’re looking for and your budget. Typically, homeowners prefer a gardener to come once per week, several times a month or once per month. This may include services like tidying up the garden or trimming and tidying hedges. Some people hire these tasks out once per year. For more regular services like mowing the lawn, weeding and trimming, you could hire someone to come every week or every other week. If you do some of the work yourself, you can have them come out less frequently.
How much does it cost to landscape your front yard?
Prices for landscaping your front yard can range from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands of dollars, depending on the scale of your front yard project. Your landscaping price will reflect how much change you implement, how much labor is required, and the cost of materials.
Landscaping is typically made up of softscaping and hardscaping. Softscaping refers to selecting trees, bushes, flowers and plants to achieve a desired aesthetic and to meet goals such as having a drought-tolerant yard. Hardscaping refers to moving earth, installing structures, and putting in decorative stonework, sidewalks or lighting. For softscaping, you may want to hire a landscape designer to consult on your plants and layout, and then do the digging and planting yourself or hire a gardner to handle the heavy lifting. A landscape designer’s hourly rate may range from $50 to $150 or more. If you want a turnkey approach, meaning someone who works with you to create the vision and then executes all the work, landscaping pricing will typically come down to a cost per square foot rather than an hourly rate. It’s a solid investment: Great landscaping can add up to 28 percent value to your home.
How much does it cost to have landscaping done?
Professional landscaping can help reinvent your outdoor space, boost your curb appeal and get a major return on investment with. Landscaping can encompass anything from adding new plants, trees and shrubs, to leveling the ground and laying sod for a lawn, to building in hardscaping such as sidewalks, water features or retaining walls. The national average landscaping price is $10,160. Landscaping prices can be far lower (with hourly rates ranging from $50 to $150) if you’re only seeking professional help with softscaping or seeking consultation on landscape design. Softscaping means adding or changing horticultural elements, such as planting a garden or adding a hedge. Hardscaping is where costs can really start to rise. Hardscaping requires labor and heavy equipment to excavate the earth; you may need to pour concrete, or you may need a pro who can transport and place gravel and other inorganic elements. Your total landscaping cost will vary based on the amount of work you want done, how much labor is required, and the cost of the materials you are using. A good rule of thumb for a major landscaping project, according to the American Society of Landscape Architects, is to budget 5 percent to 10 percent of the value of your home.
Reviews for Buffalo gardeners
Marsha P.
When the owner was supposed to come out to the house to see the project and give an estimate, he was supposed to come out in the morning. When It got to be 11:30 and he hadn't showed or called, I called him twice. He eventually DID return my call later and said he had been held up and would be there around 1 PM. The new time was OK, but I would have expected him to respect MY time.
This is where I found them lacking:
1. WEEDING: when weeding, even when I twice stressed that the weeds be DUG out, I continually witnessed them, pulling them out of the ground until the root broke. One worker tried to assure me that she was careful to pull them from the ground, but in reality she did follow the root a little ways underground, but still, until it broke. She did not dig them out to the roots end. Even while I was instructing this employee about the weeding, a second employee, who was standing right there also, ignore this and was just pulling weeds out by hand until the root broke. I am fairly certain I will be re-weeding this bed fairly soon as these weeds grow back. In fact, I am amending this writing 10 days later, I now see 3 pricker weeds that have re-established themselves right where Shawn was just pulling them out incorrectly. If you leave the roots, they just grow back. None of them seem to understand this.
2.PLANNING: I wanted them to enlarge an existing bed that only had evergreens to accommodate a single row of perennials. When giving me the initial estimate, Tom didn't have any equipment such as paint to actually draw a line. He had to rely on me illustrating with hand gestures where I envisioned the bed would go. This led to misunderstanding as outlined next. We agreed that I would purchase the plants myself, which I did. On the day when the work was done, I had to use a chain and the handle of a shovel to outline how the bed should lie. Even that would have been OK with me, if the owner hadn't later complained about the size of the bed and the amount of digging that would be necessary to remove sod before tilling.
3. WORK ETHIC: When it came to digging out the bed to accommodate a row of perennials, yarrow, the owner told me that I should have gotten Dianthus (a smaller plant) . Dianthus is too low for my purposes, would hardly be seen from the street, and would spread too much. I bought the plant that I wanted, that had the height, color, and sun requirements that I wanted. As the planning was left "vague" during the estimate, it was Tom';s own fault he apparently had a misunderstanding about this. Even still, he then indicated that he had only been planning on digging about a 10-12" wide bed - hardly wide enough for ANY perennial. He told me "I wasn't planning on having to dig that much". Truthfully, I felt he was just being lazy. It was hot out and he was obviously exhausted. I felt his weight was contributing to his position, as a 10" bed wouldn't even be wide enough for AN"Y perennial even the smaller Dianthus. I stood my ground, and he eventually said "you're the boss".
In addition to the little hiccup about the digging, Tom was gone several times from the work site for an hour each. Once just to drive one of the employees to a different job or to take his girlfriend to her work (His girlfriend had been sitting in the truck during the morning).
4 BED PREPARATION: I asked that the new strip for the perennials be tilled, but they brought with them a tiny garden tiller meant for weeding in between plants. So it only digs down 4-5" at best. Anew flower bed should be tilled about 8- 12 inches. So, even though they added the new peat and topsoil I bought, it only got tilled down half as far as it should have been.
5 LISTENING TO DIRECTIONS: When it came to installing the edging between the lawn and the flower bed, I asked to see what he was using and he said he hadn't bought it yet. I was glad of that, as it gave me the opportunity to make sure there would be no misunderstanding over that. I had previously described verbally what I wanted, but now, to make doubly sure, I went in the house and printed off an exact picture of the edging I wanted to use, but I just told him verbally that I wanted BLACK mulch. Also, I asked that he get the largest nuggets he can, and try to avoid something shredded. When he came back from the store, he got the edging right, but he purchased BROWN SHREDDED mulch. He DID offer to return it, but by that point, I let it go. I guess I should have also printed out a copy of the mulch. They also used the bare minimum of mulch to a depth of only 1-2 inches. I didn't really take a close look at it until the next day. I will just cover it with the mulch I wanted to the correct depth of 3-4 inches. They DID install the edging correctly and I was happy with that part of it.
6 PLANTING: When planting a one shrub and 7 perennials, I myself go by the saying "Dig a dollar hole for a 5 cent bush" Well, they dug a 6-7 cent hole for a 5 cent bush. They also did not loosen the roots that had been at the bottom of the pot at all or make an attempt to spread them out. If they had been root-bound at all, and the roots were directed in a circle they were planted that way. I really should have stopped them after seeing the first one planted, but seriously, by this point, I just wanted them done. None of the pots appeared to be excessively root bound and with the semi-tilled soil, I just hoped they would be OK. The next day, when I went to water them, I ended up I re-planting 3 of the 7 perennials as they were planted 2-3 inches too high. - that is just laziness in my book. He had me place them where I wanted them to go, I should have just planted them myself too.
7 EDGING They were supposed to edge the small lawn area and the strip of lawn between the sidewalk and the street. To begin with, they did not have the proper tool to edge a lawn. They were just going to use a weed whacker, which does not leave a nice clean rut next to the pavement as a lawn edger does. When they went to start on that project, they realized that they were out of string on their weed whacker and they did not have any more with them. OK, that can happen to anyone, except instead of running over to the Home Depot, 5 minutes from my house, he drove all the way across the city to his home. He was gone about an hour, and the two employees here, had to just sit here and wait for him to return. When he DID return, he then took off, to drive one of the employees somewhere and was gone again for almost an hour. One employee remained to do the edging. He used this weed whacker to run it along the both edges of the main sidewalk, and then he turned it off like he was done. I had to point out to him that the rectangle of lawn near the street had 4 sides - not just the one that he "edged". He said "oh, you want that done too?" Well, yes, I didn't think I would have had to explain that! When he again finished, I walked out to look at how it was done, and I could readily tell he didn't come anywhere close to even getting to the edge of the concrete. I showed him how I could still run my fingers under the grass about 2-3 inches where it was still overlapping the sidewalk. He took another try at it. When he was done, I looked at it again, and I had to tell him "this really looks terrible. You did not get to the edge and the line you DID make is not straight". I also had to ask him to trim around the tree. At that point I went into the house and got a large serrated knife. I used it to cut about a 3 foot length, puling away a large piece of sod from the edge and told him "This is how it should look" I then handed him the knife and let him finish with that.
8 TRIMMING: When they trimmed a row of evergreens, they basically just followed the shape that was there, but they were not shaped correctly to begin with. They were wider at the top than at the bottom, They should be the other way around so they lower branches get light. Tom, the owner, just trimmed them exactly how they were instead of correcting the shaping.
Overall, I found the 3 people to be pleasant and they DID clean up afterwards to my satisfaction, but I found them to be fairly inexperienced in gardening and gone needlessly from the site too often and too long. and they were too expensive. I found myself getting annoyed at having to correct what they were doing, such as the planting and the hedges, and the tilling - I just got to the point that I didn't even point out things I knew I could fix later myself. They are not "landscaping for less", unless you are talking about the quality of the work.
As a follow up to Tom's comments to me: On the contrary, Tom never asked me once if I was satisfied. If he had, I would have pointed out to him exactly where I wasn't. In fact, I DID complain to him about how his employee attempted to do the edging while he was gone. I told Tom about the proper tool he SHOULD have been using for the job. Tom then admitted to me that they really hadn't started up the"lawn service aspect" of their landscaping service yet. So, I guess I was just his guinea pig for them to learn how to do it. Tom only told he was going to get out his blower to clean up the sidewalks, and I asked him not to. I told him I would clean it up myself with the hose. I didn't want him blowing dirt onto the neighbors property. The houses are VERY close together. Where did he think it was going to blow? He tried to sell me future lawn work then - I told him no thanks I would do it myself (weeding and seeding). He claims he went above and beyond!??! How exactly? Almost every aspect of this job was done poorly. Name one thing that was above and beyond.
Landscape for less
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