Solstice Landscape Design

If you’re interested in working with a Landscape Designer who is responsive, artistic, accurately communicates schedule and budget, and adheres to same, I encourage you to consider Solstice Landscape Design. Tristan is a personable professional who listens, who asks questions, and who can translate a vision, however hazy, into a beautiful well-thought design.

Tristan and his crew were a pleasure to work with. Tristan had a clear and creative vision for my landscape project. I was very impressed with his professionalism and would definitely recommend him to anyone.

We just had Tristan come out for a consultation and we are extremely disappointed and underwhelmed.

Tristan does not respect our time:
1. First he came 15 minutes late - not a huge deal I guess but was a bad first impression especially when we let him pick when he wanted to come and made our schedule work for him.

2. Before he came out, me and my husband took out at least 3 hours of our busy lives to fill out a lengthy questionnaire to the best of our ability, providing pictures, and images of our yard clearly explaining our issues and the slope issues. Via email he told us that it is possible to do what we want within our budget and agreed to come out. Then when he did come out he tells us that he doesn't want to do the main thing we wanted to hire him for.

3. When he was here, he wasted both me and my husband's time discussing things that he didn't want to do and provided poorer insight than free consultations I got from other landscapers. It honestly felt that he was too lazy and did not want to take on any work if it wasn't easy. What we wanted was not weird; we just wanted tile concrete but apparently our side yard was not big enough so he wouldn't do it. Keep in mind that my husband provided him a detailed drawing with how big our side yard is so if he spent anytime looking at it then he could have saved both of us money and time and just said sorry I can't do it.

Not knowledgeable:
1. He said he would only take on fixing a drainage issue (which I would only trust a professional drainage person do anyways again based on his lack of knowledge when I asked him questions) and planting. I was extremely underwhelmed by his knowledge of plants, he could only provide two possible solutions off top of his head when a previous person provided me with at least 4 different ones off top of his head on a free consult.

2. On top of that he did not seem to understand the difference between pavers and concrete tiles. It may be that I am comparing him to the knowledge I received from a civil engineer and that's not fair but for $150 an hour from Tristan, I expected someone to be a wealth of knowledge and expertise. It was not clear at all from our discussion that he was going to be able to provide this sort of knowledge and expertise. Also whenever asking him about how much something would cost or if it's feasible, he kept saying 'I have no idea' and that he would have to ask some other contractors if they do this... Again, shows poor knowledge. And sorry what was the point of the long questionnaire we filled out again? We already told you that we wanted to build a retaining wall so why did you not say that you did not want to do this or that it wasn't within our budget instead of coming out to take our money then tell us that!!

He is not efficient, dishonest and had no creative solutions:
The thing that really drove me nuts was that he was making a design drawing at $150 per hour for just planting shrubs and plants!! You got to be kidding me; at that point, I just felt that he was trying to suck money out of us. I was willing to pay a lot of money to make our backyard beautiful but it seems like Tristan is not very good at finding creative solutions or providing good thoughtful discussion on topics regarding landscaping. I understand if he has to design and draw for a true landscape design like we wanted but when you are just going to plant a few things then I believe this is a true waste of money. I had to tell him frankly that we are on a budget and it makes no sense to pay someone that much to draw shrubs! I had to tell him no thanks but still paid him for the $300 consult though I feel that he did not deserve it whatsoever. I feel conned. Please don't make the same mistake I did and I am also questioning the validity of all these previous reviews or may be these people just didn't do ample research for other more competitive and more informative landscapers.