Home Services reviews in Middleton, Wisconsin

I had very good luck with the oaks I bought there, but the Sugar Maple seemed to struggle the first summer and was last to leaf out the following spring When I expressed concern to the Bruce Co. desk and floated the idea of returning it, my concerns were dismissed with the suggestion that it was "transplantation shock." I was told to wait and see. After a few summers of anemic growth, the tree started to wilt and brown. I submitted a wood sample to the UW Plant Pathology lab and they returned a diagnoses of fatal, arboreal "verticillium wilt." I strongly suspect it was infected at purchase. Since years had passed and the warranty had now lapsed, I did not try to return it. I did however buy the tree's replacement elsewhere.

We had a great experience working with Bruce Company on an extensive landscape project which included a Waupun stone retaining wall, UniLock pavers for a large patio, raised garden bed, several large trees, shrubs, perrenials, sod and placement of large boulders. The team included Megan Knutson, Jon Olson and Kevin Smart. Onsite installation workers and team leaders, Rich, Misael, Pepe and Lloyd all did excellent work. In spite of many rain delays over a period of 3 months, the project was completed within budget. We were very involved day to day and all the Bruce Co. employees were very responsive and professional.
Ann Jauquet & Bruce Hendrickson

Bruce company can usually be counted on for rude/aloof service but we have gone back the past few years because they would plant our window boxes if we bought the overpriced plants there. This summer, there were at least 5 employees standing around and we were told “we don’t do that anymore due to staffing.” Literally 3 people stood around discussing how to tell us no. We had picked out all of our plants and ended up leaving them there. We were willing to pay their inflated prices when it came with service but not without. Urban gardens took great care of us and didn’t even dish up any attitude like they do at Bruce.

I tried to get a bid from Bruce for a landscaping project for my home. They were one of three companies I contacted. Unlike the other bidders they spent about five minutes at my house and when I tried to follow up on the status of the bid, they never returned phone calls or emails. The estimated cost of the project was $10,000 to $15,000. When I called to complain about the lack of customer service and responsiveness to my calls, they said a manager would call me back. Never happened. I am going with a different bidder. Don't even bother. They don't need the business.

I passed this place for years because I don’t have gardening and landscaping needs but I saw an ad for their holiday gift selections. Looked like I might be able to find holiday hostess and coworker gifts, and it was. I also discovered that it’s probably a great place to find unique little gifts for people all year long. I’ll definitely shop there again when I need a unique gift that’s nice quality but won’t cost a fortune. (they also have some stuff that does cost more if you’re looking for something special!)

What should have been a positive customer experience (the sales and delivery experience was good) turned out to be poor. Shortly after delivery we discovered several fasteners missing from the back of the expensive patio furniture we paid to have assembled and delivered. We contacted them early July and now nearly 2 months have passed and the fasteners have not been installed. We still can't use the chair since it is unsafe because of the missing fasteners and summer is quickly coming to an end. Bruce Company, I ask again to please resolve this issue.

Stopped in during a late lunch hour around 1:15 pm on a Tuesday looking for a wedding gift and some specific plants. It was me and one other car in the parking lot, and I only encountered 2 other customers. Although there were staff throughout the store and in the garden center (I counted 10), only one person stopped and asked if I needed assistance-and he was very helpful. The rest of the staff seemed more interested in chatting with each other or carrying on with their tasks than checking to see if a customer needed help finding anything. Disappointing.

I strongly recommend going with a different landscaping company. The work on our new lawn was completed almost a year later than it was supposed to be completed, and was done so poorly that we've received several comments from our neighbors who had a different landscaping company how bad our yard looks compared to theirs. Erosion mats were never used on steeper slopes in our yard resulting in large areas of washout and bare areas with little to no grass growing. The areas that they did repair per our contract they used soil filled with large rocks that we needed to go pick out ourselves. Multiple complaints resulted in little being done to get the issues in our yard corrected. We are now spending hundred of additional dollars and hours trying to fix the poor job The Bruce Company did installing our yard.

Update: A bit more than 5 years after they installed our retaining walls one of them is failing due the poor work that they did. They refuse to accept any responsibility for the poor quality of their work, but did let us know they would be happy to take our money to fix their mistakes.

I reached out to Bruce Co early this spring to schedule a water feature project. I had extreme issues getting responses from them over a 3 month time period. They seemed to lose track of my request, never returned phone calls, but continued to reassure me that they wanted my business when I called repeatedly. They made site visits twice but never followed up with me. After a month of not hearing back, I called again and was reassured that they had me on the schedule for the week of 6/7 but they had been too busy to send mock-up options for my design - they said mock-ups would be sent that day, which never happened. We are now a month past my "scheduled construction" date and I never heard a single thing. Nice enough people, but totally incompetent customer service. I don't understand why they would send someone to do measurements and then never follow through. It seems like they had intentions to follow through but they were simply too disorganized to run the business. I do not recommend working with Shane who runs their Aquatics program because it seems to be managed very poorly. I wouldn't trust them with my business at this point due to how hard it's been to work with them.

The good: they grow their plants and trees from seeds and are a local business.

The bad: the salespeople (James in my case) made promises that simply weren't backed up. When I held them to account for promise they made, I received blame for their plants and trees not surviving (they blamed me, the wind, and the local animal population - true story).

I get that they need to make money and have no problem supporting good businesses who back up their products. Unfortunately, The Bruce Company is not that vendor.

My recommendation: for the money you'll spend, find a business other than The Bruce Company for your trees, grass, and landscaping. They do not back up their products and services like they should for the prices they charge. I replaced my dead Bruce Company tree with a beautiful maple tree from Jung Garden Center.

I go to the Bruce Company a lot as I have a houseplant problem. They always have a great selection of house plants of all sizes, and I think their selection of pots is the best in town. There are lots of funky colors and interesting designs!

The reason I’m giving 5 stars is due to a really wonderful interaction I had with the owner, Judith. Their credit card machine was down and I don’t carry cash. Unfortunately that meant I wasn’t going to be able to leave with my new dragon tree and pot to go with it. Unexpectedly and completely unnecessarily, Judith came over and asked to comp the plant and pot for me.

It wasn’t too expensive, but I wouldn’t have minded putting it on hold and coming back the next day, which I told her. But she insisted. It was a really sweet act of kindness that cemented my view of the business, and it’s that type of person I want to do business with.

I’ll be returning for years to come to fuel my plant addiction! They know how to treat their customers well.

We had a home built by Veridian and they use Bruce for lawncare. They offer one free washout. Installed the lawn before a strong storm that washed out most of the yard. It all settled in the drainage spots. Very little seed ever took hold. When we redeem the wash out the didn't overseed anything. They fixed 4 small spots and left us with a crabgrass field. Wouldn't recommend.

I’ve always had a pretty good experience at Bruce. Yes, their plants are a little pricier than at some other places, but they are generally also much larger and healthier too. I’ve had excellent service outside, and many different employees have taken time to show me options when I’m looking for something. They have more variety than many places too, especially the big box stores. I’ve also had great service inside too, with questions about indoor plants and issues with invasive weeds and pests. They know their stuff! I was a little disappointed when they told me that the ball and burlap tree I purchased ($$$), that began to curve significantly over the winter wasn’t covered by any warranty. We planted the tree correctly and it now looks kinda like a boomerang. They did help me try to figure out how to stake it so it would straighten, but only time will tell if that works.

Staffs pretty rude. They don’t know much about the indoor tropical plants they carry. It’s a shame because they have a great selection but I won’t be back.

I had heard good things about the Bruce Co from a friend and was very much looking forward to buying some beautiful plants there. Well, today was the day! The woman who helped me was really great and knew her stuff. I really appreciated her help.
When I went to check out there were about 6 cashiers standing around. Apparently the system was down. I explained that my trip there was 1 hour round trip. They refused to hand write a receipt claiming they had no paper or pens. I could have written a check or paid in cash. There were a out 10 people in line. A company of this size should certainly have a backup plan for if/when IT is down. They did offer to hold your order for later. Management should know that this is poor customer service.
My time and money were wasted. Not going back.

We had a negative experience working with Bruce Company. We wanted their help planting trees, re-seeding and re-grading our yard. Greg visited to look at the property and understand our wants, and we made sure to tell him our budget range multiple times. Each time agreeing that he could design something within our budget. He visited again with his design and spent an hour with us meticulous addingd things and clarifying things within the design. When the quote came back, what he had designed was 4x our budget, with the original design without any additions or changes probably 3x or so our original budget that we gave them. It felt like a complete waste of our time and a way to upsell things without any transparency to cost. We also requested an itemized list to see what the pricing was to make some cuts, and they would not provide it which was super shady. What ended up being within our budget was like 5 trees just bare planted, and they recommended phasing the project. We ended up only using them to re-grade the yard (mostly to get our $600 design fee they charge) back. Our work was scheduled for August and kept getting pushed back, and they finally made it back out in late October, which is really not ideal for re-seeding a lawn. So we paid to have them re-seed our lawn during non-optimal growing conditions, and they don’t make any guarantees about the successful growing of the lawn. Greg seemed like a nice guy, but I have to say that the Bruce Company way of working is not consumer friendly due to the lack of transparency, timeliness of response and overall value of what you get. We ended up going with SRB’s trees (they have their pricing right online and are super great to work with) and getting 19 trees planted for UNDER THE BUDGET that Bruce Company quoted us for the first “phase” of a few trees of our project.

I visited on a Saturday afternoon with only 40 minutes to closing. I was looking for flowers but didn't have a clear idea of what I wanted. Frank was extremely helpful. He showed us a lot of flowers and even told me how to take care of it. He gave us space to choose without forcing or pressuring. Everyone else at the shop was really nice even if we were cutting it close to closing time. It was a great experience and we left with a beautiful new orchid to brighten up my living room.

Would like to shout out to Heather from Bruce Company. She has stopped out at our house a couple times to help with some plants and yard grading and everytime she is here she is super nice! She's really knowledgeable about plants and grasses, answered all of my questions and even made a suggestion to a lawn issue that my husband and I didn't even realize was a lawn issue but were not sure how to fix. I really appreciate her and the work that she does. Thanks Heather!

Extremely unprofessional check out service and poor selection. I went hoping Bruce Co. would offer some interesting selections but their stock limited. I did buy a basket and found out later I paid much more than prettier baskets elsewhere. The part of my experience that earned the one star though was check out. I had all of my purchases, which included a basket and several smaller flower packs. The young man who checked me out never asked if I wanted a box to carry them in, nor did he say hello or thank you. Instead, the whole time he was talking to the young lady checker across the room about how he took so long in the bathroom because it was "Taco Tuesday" at some place he went to. Really? I think I'm done with Bruce company and will stick to small, more local places. Prices are more reasonable and customer service is actually customer service.

My husband and I are very disappointed with the work done on our property by the Bruce Company. We have a flooding issue in our backyard with standing water. Bruce Company recommended regrading our yard and assured us that this would solve the issue. The first time they regraded it (November 2022) it did not solve the issue. Bruce Company came out to look at it again after I contacted them and we were told by Bruce Company that it was not graded correctly by them. Bruce Company then regraded it for the second time (summer 2023). In addition, our pavers were left unsealed for the whole winter.

We still continue to have standing water and the issue was not solved. I have called Bruce Company and also reached out to the person who was coordinating the project to express that the problem was not corrected. I have not had follow up from them.

We trusted Bruce Company to have them correct the issue in our yard. However, it was done incorrectly, regraded for a second time and ultimately our issue is still not fixed. I do not recommend Bruce Company. They are expensive and do not fix the issue that they state they will.

Contracted as part of Veridian Homes to put in grass and plants. They panted on the same day a storm was planned which resulted in a washout within 10 hours. Took them months to come back and repair. They planted dead plants that I had to nurse back to health day 1. My Mother-in-law came to visit 10 hours after them planting and made a comment about our plants being dead. And, don’t even get me started on the grass. They planted weeds. Very little grass. We are in the process of redoing it ourselves and might have to hire another company to start it over.

Giant expensive waste of time. Also, their communication is awful.