Our experience with Rusty was a mixed bag. At the beginning, he was great to work with and provided…read morea beautiful layout for our landscaping.
However, when we went to go picked out the plantings for our yard, I was offered a pretty limited variety of things to choose from at a greenhouse/nursery he wanted to use. Because we had a very harsh winter last year. It killed off a lot of the plants that were at the nurseries. I wanted lots of grasses for our yard, and despite them having a very limited number of grasses, I went ahead with his recommendations. Many of the plants looked very dead, but I was told they were dormant and would "bounce back". Six of large the grasses that he planted were absolutely dead and stayed that way. They never got any new growth on them. Additionally, several of the heather that he planted were also in really bad condition and never bounced back either. This is important info for later.
Rusty also installed an irrigation system. We were going to hire someone who does nothing but irrigation, but Rusty told me that he would not "guarantee any of the plants" if we didn't use him for the irrigation. I was in town during the whole process of planting and setting up the irrigation system. Rusty set up the irrigation system to run on a program that he said would be best. A few days after everything finished up, I had to leave for Michigan for about three weeks. I left the irrigation system on, confident that it was doing its job since Rusty installed everything and assured me that it was working. Needless to say, it was not working properly. Lines were blowing open because they were very shoddily put together and one whole giant section was not working at all.
When I returned in late May, many of the plantings looked really bad. Some were just as dead as when they were put in and others looked like they were struggling a lot. Rusty came by and looked at things and scolded me for not running the irrigation. I told him that the irrigation had been set up by him and programmed by him and had been running according to his schedule. I told him that I wanted some of the plantings replaced and he grumbled about it and told me they needed more time. 95% of those I pointed out were just dead. In addition, I told him that the largest planting area seemed very dry like it was not getting any water. He argued with me and said it was working fine. I asked him whether or not The nursery would replace the dead items and he told me no. I pressed him on this because I've never heard of a nursery not guaranteeing their plants for at least 90 days, especially when they were in such poor condition when we got them. He replaced about 12 plants and expected me to pay for them. I told him no because It was not my fault that they were planted dead and stayed that way. Additionally, there were many blank areas in our Landscaping and I went to purchase more plants, which Rusty then put in to the Landscaping for me. I've had to purchase more plants this spring as many plants didn't make it. Six heather, six more grasses and two large plantings to the front of our house because there were many empty areas.
Because our irrigation wasn't working properly, I spent all summer watering heavily every other day to make sure that we didn't lose any other plants. It pretty much defeated the whole point of having irrigation. Over the winter, the valve boxes completely filled with water and shorted out the half ass set up. I had to pay someone $700 this spring to replace all the valves in the boxes. Prior to him starting, the system wouldn't turn on at all because everything was shorted out. Now that irrigation doesn't run at all, I had our irrigation guy call Rusty to find out about a layout plan, but he refused to provide it saying that I hadn't finished paying him.
We paid over $40,000 for landscaping on a small lot. This was to include full irrigation for the area, and a supposed guarantee on the plants. Neither of which he has stood by. I would NEVER recommend working with Rusty due to him not standing by his work.
