The Ugly, The Bad & The Good…

..well let’s hope that you’ve learned your lesson this time…
*warning lots of pictures*
We will start with the ugly.  These are the things that should never be done!

It didn’t occur to anyone to put down a tarp for the crush and run or the mulch?  So into the driveway it went, the reason I say this is ugly because now our driveway is full of mulch and crush and run and it will have to be raked with the stone rake on the tractor.  Next in an attempt to clean it up, they blew mulch and GRAVEL into my flower bed, that now I have to rake out! 
Remember this beautiful picture?

Even with the leaves, the woodland poppies and daffodils were pretty.  Well that’s not the case now..

Instead of removing leaves by rake or by hand they chose a jet engine and guess what, it decapitated almost all of my flowers.  Were it not for the two glasses of wine I’ve already had this post would be filled with some very colorful language!
Long before any work was started I spent a few hours cleaning the pine bark path off, by hand.  All the leaves had been removed, but I guess that wasn’t good enough as someone blew all the pine bark away.
.

And buried the plants in the back with at least some of it…

Here you can see the gravel and the crap piled up around the base of the daffodils, the entire front half of the bed is like that where they blew it in an attempt to clean up the mess of mulch and crush and run.


The bed in the the middle of the driveway didn’t fair much better heavy blowing left a lot of my plants bent over, some will recover this season, many won’t.  The mulch was dumped and buried some plants completely and others partially.  Broken and uprooted flowers fill this bed and the one at the front porch and it breaks my heart.  It will take me days to sort through all of this and I've got to get the mulch away from the crowns of the plants so they don't rot.
Now for the bad..

Two pine trees, one they ignore, one they mulch??

Nit picky?  Maybe.  I don’t like that they dumped small pieces behind the wall or that they stacked small pieces on top of the wall.  Just ask me where I want them instead of leaving me more work!  I asked did they need another pallet of stone, no he said.  Yes! they did so that the top stones would be large ones.  I'd rather have extra left over than this.  I told them they would need to back fill in a few spots, no they said we won’t.  Guess what, yeah it needs to be back filled which means us hauling dirt from the pile..Oh yeah about that pile.

They said there wouldn’t be much dirt and sod, they said we could reuse the sod because they were using a sod cutter. Next they asked where to put the extra dirt.  The back corner I said, but don’t leave a huge pile as Cooper runs back there. Oh no we won’t do that,  I was told that they were going to rake it out but when faced with the task, they asked if they could use our tractor to take care of it.  Seriously??  So now Randy will be cleaning up that mess, the driveway mess.

I had asked for them to remove the pachysandra and been told yes, but then when I brought it up was told that he hadn’t planned on doing that but would mulch I said that makes no sense!  The weeds and the pachysandra need to come out before spreading mulch. (Not that I was jazzed at the idea of them spreading mulch in this bed after the fiasco in the front!)

So and Randy took care of removing the pachysandra in about 10 minutes.
The good…

The beds that were edged, that didn’t have many plants were mulched nicely and look fantastic.  The two maples they planted are great too.

He had a great idea and transplanted a bunch of my ostrich ferns to ensconce the fire pit.  They were so pretty waving in the breeze and I like that it softens the wall and I love the smell of ferns!

Wow, wow, wow!  This area is totally transformed and I love it.  Yes I can still see the heat pumps peeking through those poor azaleas that have been eating to death by the deer but hopefully they will leaf out some more.  I love the border, I love the plantings I just love all of it!  I have hated staring at that wall for years!

This border is wonderful, not happy with a few bits and pieces of it, but overall this turned out great and does what I needed; it makes it easier to mow around, will keep the mulch in and looks nice!

What I’ve learned from all of this is that it can be a landscaper, landscape designer or even a landscape architect.  It doesn’t seem to matter at all who I call, it all ends the same way, me just not being completely happy, especially with mulching.  I get it really I do, no one and I mean no one (except maybe my Mom!) is going to do things the way I do.  I’ve often joked that I learned gardening through osmosis, as my Mom had me in the dirt as far back as I can remember.  I’ve worked at nurseries and I’ve gardened to some extent for at least the last 30 years of my life, so I’ve got a some experience in this world.  If it’s a plain bed that has few plants, a new bed with no plants, or a need for transplants of big plants, you are probably safe. Get into detail mulching, cleaning out of beds and specific garden goals and in all seriousness, you are just better off doing it yourself.  I was so happy to get help to take care of things that I just didn’t have time to take care of.  Now I’ve got less time because I’ve got to fix the things that got messed up by the people I paid to do it right..
Lesson, seriously, learned!