Gardens of Growth

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My wife and I DO NOT RECOMMEND using this business for your outdoor space needs. They do not take your budget into consideration when designing, they do not communicate well, and they are very unprofessional. However, to be fair in my review – they are overall nice people and do seem to provide a quality finished product. As for me and my wife, I feel we are very reasonable consumers and not just out for vengeance - after all we did pay them in full for their services even though their work was incomplete, and the plans unusable. I am simply trying to inform potential clients of our bad experience so that a similarly bad experience can be prevented by using a different contractor.



My wife and I decided to remodel our back yard and contacted Gardens of Growth to help us plan and design this space. From the beginning we told them that after the design portion was completed we would take the plans and get quotes from various contractors. This service cost a little over $1700 and would be applied to our construction if we used them. Our total maximum budget for the whole project was $150,000. They provided us with a couple initial designs, which we tweaked around until we had a good rough draft. Then, it was time for our first meeting to discuss costs, materials, etc. This was when everything began to fall apart.



At this meeting, we were absolutely shocked to find our proposal at over $180,000 and not even including the pool, hot tub, and fire pit, which would easily push our costs to around $250,000. They obviously did not take our budget into consideration when designing. At the conclusion of this meeting it was determined that drastic cuts needed to be made in order to fit into our budget. Unfortunately, in the days and weeks following Gardens of Growth was of little to no help. Either they were not interested in helping us find cost-cutting solutions or not knowledgeable enough to do so. It was ME who was making suggestion after suggestion to decrease the costs even after pleading with them that I am not the professional and didn’t know where costs could be cut without sacrificing too much design – that’s what we were paying them for!



As we neared a final design, still without any cost-cutting help, we mentioned to them that we would be starting to interview other contractors to complete the project – just as we mentioned on day 1. Then, without notice, they told us that we were over the design time allotted for our project and anything additional would be charged at a rate of $75 per hour! When confronted, they rightfully claim that the contract we signed with them stated they have the right to charge more when their initial estimate of time is exceeded. I completely understand this, BUT, we were NEVER told prior to this moment that we were getting close to their allotted time, etc. Gardens of Growth did not communicate well at all. Had we known that we were getting close to this time running out, things would have been done differently to maximize this remaining time. What is really bothersome is that Gardens of Growth spent so much of this design time we were paying for without consideration for our budget! Then they were going to charge us more to fix their mistakes? Had they worked with our budget in the first place, I’m sure the final design would have been easily accomplished.



Needless to say, at this point I just asked for the deliverables and did not continue at the ridiculous $75/hour rate. Therefore, I ended up with about a 75% complete plan that is completely unusable. I have had to spend hours upon hours myself researching materials, meeting with contractors and redesigning the space so that it fits perfectly within our budget – all of which should have been accomplished with Gardens of Growth. We are happy to say that since severing ties with Gardens of Growth we have been able to get a design we love, using high quality materials, all within our budget.