This so called professional landscaping company has devastated our neighborhood. Unfortunately for us the previous BOD for the HOA allowed our management company to persuade them into signing a 3 yr contract that favors Charleston Grounds and not our property owners. During these 3 long years Lee Hickman has managed to nickel and dime us to the point of exhaustion. All of the terms on his contract state services will be performed as needed and as time permits - very vague and subjective terms which has allowed his crew to rarely prune bushes, trim back low hanging branches, never treat for weeds, run over irrigation heads and then charge us to replace them, put the mower deck so low it cuts cable and fibre, do shoddy work and over charge us and worst of all created a situation that now has required us to have property condemed by code enforcement.
He refuses to allow board members accompany him when he audits our irrigation system, charges us to fix the same sprinkler heads several times a year, will not turn over maps he was paid to generate during these audits and then locked the HOA out of the irrigation system until we pay him to fix the sprinkler heads we cannot even verify need to be fixed. He was paid several thousand dollars to run and burry new wiring for the irrigation system based on his recommendations, but he never burried the wiring as he was required to do per his contract. Since the work was completed his landscape crew has run over the wire cutting it and now he wants to charge us thousand of dollars more to replace the wiring they destroyed.
Two years ago the management company, the previous HOA BOD and Lee Hickman bullied homeowners into an errosion "fix". In some cases the homeowners were not even allowed to have a say in what was being done to their properties, some were threatened with being arrested if they prevented Charleston Grounds from completing the work. The severe errosion was addressed with dirt, sod and bushes planted in the drip line. No measures were taken to keep the new dirt from washing away and now 1 foot deep trenches have formed and these yards are dangerous to walk in. No permits were submitted to the county to do this work and Lee Hickman's fix for this mess is to throw more sod down on top of the trenches creating an even more dangerous situation.
If you want your neighborhood to look like an inner city ghetto then hire Lee Hickman and Charleston Grounds. If you want quality service, quality work and a company that will stand behind their product you will need to look elsewhere because quality is not a service they offer. read more
