I have worked with Ana for the past three years and she has helped me transform my yard from a mess…read moreof neglected beds into a beautiful and pollinator-friendly landscape. She is incredibly knowledgable and fun to work with and delivers great service. I'm also grateful for her coaching regarding my vegetable garden...again, a total transformation!

I have worked with Ana Vitek since she started Garden Botany. She is wonderful! Ana is very…read moreknowledgeable and passionate about organic gardening. I have a completely organic yard and flower garden in Evanston which Ana helps maintain. She is strongly committed to organic gardening and pest control, so that I feel absolutely comfortable in having my grandchildren anywhere in the garden. She does an excellent job planting, weeding, trimming, fertilizing and pruning. She knows what is needed and when. When I have questions, she either knows the answer immediately or is able to find it for me- she always follows up. She has planned and planted beautiful new borders for me, and always has excellent suggestions whether for new plantings or for filling in a gap in an existing border. I highly recommend Ana and Garden Botany. She is kind, gentle, conscientious, expert, and loves what she does. She is trustworthy and reliable. She fully deserves five stars.

Monica and her team are the best! She replanted our front yard garden 3 years ago and it every…read morespring it gets better than the previous year. The native plants and flowers are thriving, the colors and textures are wonderful, and the bees and butterflies love it too. The Red Stem crew is also top notch on maintenance with their stewardship programming, since we travel for work and don't have the time and energy to always look after the upkeep.

They I do not recommend this company, they overcharge and then on top of that they add on "travel…read morecharges", "dumping yard waste in our own bin" fees, "water break" fees, credit card fees, bank transfer fees. They say they will come and don't show up. I asked to speak to the manager and never got a call back. We got taken.

Roberto and his team did an amazing job on our yard. We had a number of areas that were overgrown…read morewith weeds and day lilies, as well as bricks and concrete blocks that we needed removed. Brass Lawn Care removed all of this, worked within our budget, and made our yard look great with their landscaping and by planting flowers. We couldn't be happier with how it turned out!

We had a great experience working with Lofton Landscaping. Carolyn was wonderful to work with. She…read moreanswered all of our questions, took her time going over our patio plans, and even let us use some of their pavers to help finalize the design. The crew was great. They were professional, efficient, and the patio turned out exactly how we wanted it. The finished space has a clean, polished look, and they kept the price right where we needed it. We couldn't be happier with the results. Highly recommend!

Hired them to move existing brick pavers back 18", plant some new plants and trees, and install new…read moresod. The contract was broken up into 3 charges, for moving pavers, the sod, plants. At first things seemed okay. We discussed specifics. The previous landscaper put in pavers with no edging, I wanted it, C. Lofton said she could do it. Charge for moving pavers included removing old edging (there was none, moving pavers and replacing on crushed gravel, they did that, and putting mulch in newly created space. That last wasn't done. Final part of charge indicated total bed edging. 3 men showed up, machine removed 18" of sod, loaded sod on truck. C Lofton left soon after arrival and never returned. 2 men began digging a new trench to put in the gravel. After loading the sod they only had enough gravel to lay about 8 feet of brick. The driver left to get gravel, and the edging, which they didn't originally bring. So they had no material and no supervision. They dug out the new trench, took dirt out to the truck, which puzzled me as it was needed to fill the newly created space, and brushed dirt off the bricks while waiting for the driver. He was gone around 3 hours. When he returned, after 11am, the main work actually began. Soon, I noticed the bricks were very above the grass level. I told the man, he agreed, he flipped about a dozen off, removed some gravel and relaid them. He proceeded all the way around the u shaped yard. Only 1 man laid all the bricks. Half way through I asked why they were removing the dirt, so they started to make a dirt pile in the yard. Nearing the end I again saw that the bricks were too high, again the man agreed, and quickly changed it. They took all day. I didn't hear from C. Lofton for several days, and when I called her she said she was still trying to understand why they took so long, as she only estimated it would take them half a day. She pressed me, wanting me to explain. I told her all of the above, and that the ground was very hard from no rain, they didn't have the material etc. She kept repeating that she could not understand why it took so long. I invited her to come over, we would look at it together and she could better undersatnd. I put back the line for the first part, showed her how high he had been putting the bricks, and her first response was "If he did that I will fire him." Then she asked me why they took dirt out to the truck, I said I didn't know, then she screamed that she didn't believe me, if they did that then where was the dirt, and I pointed to the bed. She then said "NO, we aren't going to do this",and started to leave. I reminded her that I had a $2000 deposit, and she had only done the part listed for $500, and she said she would have to figure out the hours and let me know. In actuality they had also spread grub control in anticipation of resodding and transplanted one plant, and yanked out another. C. Lofton later messaged that she charges $1200 per day for a 3 man crew, and she would be willing to negotiate and split the difference between my $500 and her $1200. I might have considered some compromise, but she took no responsibility for underbidding the job, not having the material needed, no supervision, and screaming at me and refusing in any way to consider anything I said. I declined for the above stated reasons, and requested a refund so that I could hire someone else. She said she would have to figure out the cost for the grub control etc. and let me know. My next received message from C. Lofton included a huge amount for the etc. part. Now she had imagined the bill to be $1120 for a $500 job. She listed the charges while changing the original contract language. Now adding (brick) into the edging language and leaving out the original total bed edging language, She added a cryptic charge of "Line marked by customer as top of brick line" whatever that means, for a $240 charge. I changed no line. Charged me $220 for the edging that was part of the original $500 charged, charged me again for removing the sod (that was clearly included in the $500 charge), and $180 for transplanting grasses and one plant, removing another. We discussed removing the grasses, they did not move them. They transplanted one plant, dug a tiny hole and put it in. They removed one weed size plant by pulling it out. Now they offer a $880 refund instead of the proper $1500. They went from wanting $850 in compromise, to $1120. My last offer after that was $500 for the original contract, $50 for the grub control, and $50 for moving a plant and throwing another away. The interesting part is, when the differences first came up, C. Loftons main answer was that she couldn't afford to lose money on the project. I am not responsible for her making a poorly thought out bid, not remembering what we agreed to, to having an alternate definition of what was in the contract, to her not supervising or having her men show up with the right material. She is.

Okay, if you want professional, personal, creative gardening and landscaping, it doesn't get any…read morebetter than Gardens That Grow! I phoned Mary G and she promptly scheduled time to see my garden space, listen to what I wanted to do and how much I wanted to spend. I was under some pressure to get the work done by a deadline and Mary accommodated me by getting the estimate done in a day! It was structured in components of design, plants and labor so I could easily understand it and see where I was spending my money. My yard gets almost no sun and I can't grow flowers, so it had to be a green garden. I had the typical hostas, astilbes, helibores, and columbines before but Mary knew so many more interesting plants and had some very good ideas about how to design my space so it had variations in color and height and texture. She mixed shrubs and ground cover with exotics and bog plants, giving me a really exciting garden! I never knew that my boring back yard could have transformed like this! The best part was that she and her crew were so terrific! They worked quickly and efficiently and cleaned everything up beautifully before they left. Well, no I lied. The best part was how amazing Mary is! She knows all the Latin names of everything, how best to plant, how to prune and care for your garden, and is just a Sweetheart, too!

I fully expected that I would be writing a glowing review for Gardens that Grow. In mid March of…read morethis year, I contacted them by email, detailing the work that I was interested in (annual plantings, lawn care). Within a day Mary got back to me to set up a time to come by and talk. While she canceled the first appointment and was late to the second (which I thought nothing of at the time), we had a delightful discussion when she came by. We discussed significantly expanding the scope of work -- in phases -- to include setting up irrigation for veggie plants, switching out the soil in the veggie planters, and some great longer range projects that would involve more intricate landscaping. At the end of the visit, she told me she would send a proposal. The problem is she didn't. I would email her from time to time, and she would assure me she was working on it. I called her, I texted her, and each time she would assure me she was on it. I even sent her an email saying that it would be helpful to know if she wasn't interested in the project so that I could move on. I got a response to that email from her business manager, who assured me they would take care of it. Over a month passed....then about 2. I got the proposal and accepted it immediately and asked them to get started. They gave me dates, which came and went. There's no question that some of it was weather-related, but I don't believe that all of it was. Eventually, I lost faith. I had someone else come out and give me an estimate, and based on their word that they would get the work done, I sent a short email to GTG. No real apology, though they said they understood. I do believe that under different circumstances, it would have been possible for them to have done a great job. But the fact is that just didn't happen. The reason I'm writing this review is not to say you shouldn't use them. I hope it goes better for you than it did for me. But I do believe they did a very poor job of not delivering for two months, during which time I really didn't need to be begging a landscaper to come to my house so I could pay them to do what they said they would do.

Another year! This time with Amy since Rinda retired. We loved the planting and it evolved…read morethrough the summer with different blooms. Thanks Amy!

Rinda and Amy were fantastic to work with. They came out to provide ideas, expert opinion, and…read moreestimates with a range of options to help us determine what worked best and made the process very smooth. Our new trees look great and I look forward to working with them again. Highly recommended.

The team at Toparius, hi Danny!, always deliver the most beautiful items. My small space has a…read moregorgeous boxwood surrounded by beautiful flowers--makes me so happy!

The entire team at Topiarius is super talented and super NICE! They are flexible and stick with you…read morethrough the design and installation process to give you a stellar design based on your preferences. The owner Craig is super patient, funny, and dedicated to making a client's dreams come true. Ours was not a conventional dream. The wonderful designer, Dan S, is an expert at creating beautiful native plant gardens as well as lush deck/container masterpieces you will enjoy through 4 seasons. Danny T's coordination made me feel like royalty! They are accommodating and more than honor their 1 year warranty. My husband and I literally set up 3 sets of comfy chairs in our home to gaze at the 3 beautifully planted areas: front, courtyard and back. We worked with 3 different foremen and their crew, all were stellar! We highly recommend Topiarius to create your dream outdoor space for all seasons. We will be posting pictures as summer comes up.

You think you know plants until you meet Maureen! She's an expert!…read more We could not have had a better overall experience--communicated well about timeline and was thorough in the design. Our expectations were way beyond met and love seeing our new yard. Can't wait to see how it will continue to grow ofer the next few years. Also--a neighbor that lives across the street a few doors down told us our new landscaping just increased his house value by 5k.

Referral from my realtor. Last fall I sent several emails with extremely slow responses and no luck…read moreobtaining a quote. I assumed my timing was off so I tried again this spring. Again poor communication. Chasing someone to get back to me to schedule a visit didn't give me the warm and fuzzies so I emailed Katie the office manager and I received back timely I might add, "good luck with your project." I was warned by my realtor, but because Maureen Taylor is local, I gave it my best shot. Very unprofessional. Beware!!!!