Consumer Action

(Page 2 of 2)

6. "I buy cheap plants-and you'll never notice."
There are some very good reasons you hire a landscaper to keep your garden looking like Versailles: You don't have the time or the know-how to do it yourself. And crooked landscapers thrive on this. "Less-than-reputable people will do whatever they can to get by," says Hugo Davis. One trick Davis says some landscapers favor: planting fast-growing bushes that are less expensive than slow-growing bushes, but will later require more care and labor from the landscaper. Also, instead of planting high-tech trees engineered to repel insects and resist diseases, they'll simply plant a cheaper, old-fashioned version — a distinction you won't notice until the tree becomes riddled with fungus.

What can you do? Not much, according to Davis, who admits that even he can be tricked by look-alike plants. "It's similar to buying a car and being told that it gets 22 miles to the gallon," he says. "You won't know that for sure until you've owned the car for a while." All the more reason to choose a landscaper with a good local rep.

7. "I don't finish what I start."
Deborah Labate hired a landscaper she'd found in the Yellow Pages to plant trees and bushes at her Florida home. Before taking the job, the landscaper wanted $1,000 up front, $1,000 when the job started and $2,000 at the job's completion. Sounded legitimate — until she gave him the initial $2,000. "I didn't see him for a week," LaBate recalls. "He'd tell me it was too cold to work, that it was raining, that the ground was too wet to dig. Anything to keep from working on my yard."

You might suggest that she file suit. Bad idea. "You can't prove fraud or deceit because these guys start the job seeming like they intend to finish," gripes Erin Mullen-Travis, a certified code-compliance officer in Charlotte County, Fla. "The way to protect yourself is to get job parameters in writing and parcel out the payments very carefully. If somebody asks for a 50% deposit, that should throw up flags." A more agreeable figure is 30%. Mullen-Travis says that if you do run into a snag with a landscaper, consider going to small-claims court — "especially if money was given and no work has been done. Under any law, that is theft." Or just do what LaBate did. "I relentlessly called the landscaper — every day," she says. "Finally, he came back, and I told him, 'Finish the job, this week, or I'll become your worst nightmare.'" The threat worked. LaBate says she now has the best lawn in the neighborhood.

8. "What I'm doing won't make your home more valuable."
Good landscaping can keep a home's value blooming. Debby Bright, a real estate broker in Gilroy, Calif., estimates that homeowners can recoup 150% of their landscaping costs when they sell. The one hitch: You need the right landscaping. Oleander bushes, for example, look great, but they're poisonous and a turnoff to botanically knowledgeable house hunters.

Bright's ideas for home-enhancing landscaping include trees that block noise and shrubs that create a sense of privacy; you don't want just a large, house-exposing lawn. While Bright points out that lattices and high hedges are more appealing than brick-and-cement walls, one quaint touch to avoid is climbing ivy. "It attracts roaches and termites. You'll think your landscaper's ivy is very nice until you are about to sell your house, you have a termite inspection and wind up spending $8,000 to resolve the pest problem."

9. "My workers chug your beer when they should be mowing your lawn."
A man in arizona claims that his landscaper stole pills from his medicine cabinet. A Tennessee woman says she left a group of landscapers home alone, then later discovered they went down to her basement to drink her beer and play eight ball on her pool table.

Because the landscaping profession has a generally low barrier of entry, homeowners need to be particularly vigilant in checking references and finding out about a company's track record. Mary Ellen Burton says be wary of so-called pickup truck landscapers. These nefarious gardeners will affix magnetic signs to their trucks as identification rather than using the more permanent painted-on logos. But their inexperience can do lasting damage. Burton says these landscapers will commit such mistakes as applying too little mulch to soil or planting a tree too deeply. She has even seen landscaped homes with Leyland cypress planted near the front door — a major foliage faux pas. "Typically, Leylands are used as a screening plant," says Burton, but if you plant one too close to the house, "in two years it will grow to be as tall as your entryway." To avoid such foul-ups, make sure the landscaper has liability insurance (about $1 million is a reasonable amount of coverage), and vet him through the Better Business Bureau.

10. "I'll make the neighbors hate you."
You're relaxing on a crisp autumn afternoon, planning to do nothing more than catch the Rams-Packers game on TV. Suddenly, your couch time is blasted to pieces by the roar of a leaf blower. Suburbia's equivalent of Black Sabbath practicing in your basement, leaf blowers can pump out 75 decibels of rumbling, high-pitched noise. How bad can it get? Last December, in the posh New Jersey town of Far Hills, Chubb CEO Dean O'Hare had a gardening crew working on his 20-acre estate day and night, letting their leaf blowers rip. Neighbors complained so much that a town ordinance was proposed to limit the hours of noisy leaf blowing.

O'Hare and his crew should take a tip from the gentle people of Palo Alto, Calif. The city has set hours when leaf blowers can be used (9 a.m. to 5 p.m. during the week), and landscapers must take a "leaf blower etiquette" course offered by the Palo Alto police department. They're also required to use low-noise leaf blowers. "We tell gardeners to use the full extension on their leaf blower," says Lieut. Don Hartnett. "That allows it to run at fewer rpms, so the motor doesn't need to work as hard — or as loud."

This story was originally published on April 16, 2002.

For more answers to your tough investing questions, subscribe to SmartMoney Magazine.

	Page 1 | 2