Groundhog Landscaping Inc.

A few of our electrical technicians were handling an emergency call, digging in the snow trying to find an electrical box, waiting for our backhoe to arrive, one of the Groundhog technicians was driving by and offered to move the mound of snow with his plow. It was extremely helpful and saved a lot of time digging.

Spent over 100k with them in 2023. TLDR: hardscape work was amazing, but bad experience with irrigation and planting beds. They don't stand by the quality of their work, will nickel and dime you, and customer service is horrible.

Irrigation leaked from day 1. We complained 3 times in 2023. A tech came 3 times and tightened a clamp each time and told us it was not leaking. When they came to blow out for the winter the irrigation manager told me he identified a valve that was blowing air and he felt it was a crack or defect with the valve. Several plants - probably 8-10 of them, started to die in the fall. He assured me he would add notes to the account and fix everything in the spring, replace the dying plants, and add new mulch.

Spring arrived, no one came. A tech showed up to reopen and test after winter. They never put notes on my account and over the winter the irrigation manager was fired. I explained everything, the tech found the same leaking valve and tightened the clamp again despite me telling him the manager said it needed to be replaced. During the visit the tech changed my watering schedule to increase the water by 4x. They did NOT tell me - now the struggling plants were totally dead due to the additional overwatering. I called the owner and complained - he said he'd never heard we had a problem and acted as if his company is not responsible just because he wasn't personally aware. He promised to handle it himself, but didn't show up. Another week later he sent someone different from the office, they brought a tech and fixed some valves that were stuck due to sediment (this part was no one's fault and would not have mattered given the 4x overwatering schedule they set) and told me the watering schedule was very wrong (as if I set it myself) - he didn't know his own tech set the schedule. They removed the schedule. Then they CHARGED $450 for the visit and did NOT replace any plants or mulch.

Another couple weeks go by a new batch of plants stated to die. I found that a 100 sq ft area was no longer getting water b/c when they "fixed" things the last time they kinked an irrigation line.

I hired an irrigation company to come take a look. This is their feedback:

* the kink was easy to fix
* there are too many drip nozzles for the area (by a large margin)
* for example, there are drip tubes all over the bed even in places that never had a plant
* some of the plants require more or less water depending on the location and type of plant - but they used the same 2gpm drips on every single plant from trees to tiny herbs - so some very small ones are dying due to overwater, and some big ones are struggling due to underwater
* some of the plants were stuck in ledge with no soil - of course they will die - no one told us nor did anyone ask if we should put them in a different place or bring in more soil
* one entire planting bed is at the bottom of a hill with grass and other beds with irrigation - all irrigation runoff ends up in the same planting bed, and that bed was put over hard-packed clay which is over ledge - there is zero drainage for plants, if you pull out a dead plant there is a hole filled with water that never drains - this area should have had crushed stone underneath with planting soil on top to let the bed drain

We're going to do some of this ourselves and hire another company to fix the rest. The owner did offer to replace the plants "even though it's not their fault". He continues to act like he's not responsible just because he wasn't aware from the beginning - almost like "you never told me, it's too late now!".

Now this last thing is just a nit but reflective of their customer service - we had mulch blown in the spring. They missed 3 spots. We called and they said someone would come out to fix. We reminded them twice via text. We reminded them when they were here to look at the irrigation and they said "I put in a ticket, no idea why they never came" and did nothing else about it. So going into October we still have bare spots with no mulch!

Groundhog reset our flagstone patio in 2024 for a lot of money - $12,000 - and did not properly treat the grout. Consequently much of the grout has washed out and there are lose stones. We have tried to contact them, four times last year, they promised to come and repair their work and nothing was ever done.