Land Effects

They got our grass green from patchy and brown in less than a month. They recommended settings for our irrigation and arrive on time as promised every week.

We hired Land Effects, Inc. after reading claims about the expertise of Land Effects’ owners and staff at Land Effects’ website. We agreed to pay $ 280 per month for weekly landscape maintenance, which was to include: starting irrigation in the Spring and blowing out irrigation lines in the Fall; careful monitoring of irrigation times and coverage; mowing; edge-​trimming; weeding lawn and beds; and trimming shrubbery. We agreed to pay extra for thatching and aeration, whenever recommended by Land Effects.
Before we hired Land Effects in 2011, our healthy blue grass was 2 ½−3 inches in height and watered every other day. Land Effects cut our grass shorter than 2 inches, began watering twice a day, and fertilized frequently. Eleven weeks after Land Effects started, our lawn developed Necrotic Ring Spots (NRS). Land Effects claimed that our lawn was infected with NRS fungi before Land Effects began maintenance. We accepted Land Effects’ claim and agreed to pay for expensive fungicide spraying of our lawn.
We have since learned that too-​frequent watering and fertilization, shortening blue grass to less than 2 inches, inadequate thatching and aeration, and/​or failure to disinfect equipment can bring NRS to a previously uninfected blue grass lawn. Tim, one of Land Effects’ two owners, admitted that Land Effects’ crews ‘see a lot of NRS’ in the lawns of Land Effects’ commercial clients AND that Land Effects cleans its equipment only once per week.
We have always paid Land Effects’ bills early; and we paid for thatching and aeration whenever recommended by Land Effects.
We live elsewhere in Fall and Spring. On May 31^st of this year, we learned that Land Effects had failed to start our irrigation system. Our lawn was brown and dying. Land Effects abandoned our property despite the promise of Tom, the other Land Effects’ owner, that he’d monitor our lawn very carefully this season. Also, Land Effects had promised to have our lawn sprayed with fungicide this Spring.
On May 31^st, Land Effects started watering our lawn, for long periods every day, and arranged for the fungicide spray. Large areas of our lawn remain dead. Land Effects has refused to fix the dead areas at no cost to us. Also, our NRS is proliferating; and overwatering has made the roots of our grass unhealthily short.
Every week, the Land Effects crew has rushed to mow and edge our lawn. However, our beds and lawn have many weeds, and our shrubs have not been trimmed. Irrigation coverage has been inconsistent, and misaligned or broken heads haven’t been fixed until totally brown areas develop.
We have terminated our relationship with Land Effects. Based on our unhappy experiences with Land Effects, we cannot recommend this company.