Hortus Design Sustainable Landscapes

June 2015:
Ooops! There WERE problems! The grass sprung up within 10 days. She had not sprayed a pre-​emergent weed killer, nor put down weed fabric! Since the job was to replace lawn, that seemed to me to be an intrinsic part of the job. When I called her attention to it, she maintained it was weeds! Nope, it was grass. I pushed back and finally she had two guys come and remove the mulch and put down weed fabric in the worst area, at no charge.
Later, I had to pay $ 300 to replace a valve that was incorrectly installed.
I was pleased to begin with, but she doesn’t know her stuff well enough to provide lasting satisfaction.

Vijaya and her crew worked form a design done by a landscape designer who recommended her and two other landscapers. The project was a water-​wise landscape intended to be eligible for the local water company rebate. The job was completed with a minimum amount of disruption and came out exceeding our expectations, There were a lit of extras provided, such as cleaning and pruning of existing plants, We highly recommend this company.

I’ve hired Vijaya/​Hortus Design in 2012, 2013, and 2014 to complete various projects.
Back in 2012 she replaced 150 feet of redwood fence, installed a bamboo barrier and planted 40 feet of bamboo to screen our house from the neighbors. She subcontracted the fence work to Sierra Fence, which did an excellent job. Her own team hand dug and installed the bamboo barrier and planted the bamboo. She worked with us to meet my wife’s discriminating color pallet. She blended two bamboo species that are compatible with one another. The bamboo screen now, 2 years later, is perfect and a fabulous addition to our yard.
Vijaya also created a trellis and planted grape vines and star jasmine and an arbutus tree. She mapped and bid a more extensive changes to our yard that are still pending. She made aggressive bids for fence and path work, at, say, half the price of another bid we received.
She’s attentive and communicates well. I withhold the 5^th star because she sometimes too frugal in her proposals and work. For example, she piggybacked the bamboo drip irrigation with the garden drip irrigation, but i later had to install its own valve as it wasn’t receiving enough water in hot spells.
I’ll continue to use Vijaya and Hortus in years to come.

Vijaya of Hortus Design is a superb landscaper. She took my barren hillside and made it a beautiful terraced garden. I am so pleased with her work. Her crew was prompt and courteous and very hard working. Her communication skills are excellent, which sets her apart from 90% of the landscapers out there. I highly recommend Hortus.

We had an exceptional experience from start to finish with Hortus. I will post pics with this review.
Here were our goals:
–multi-​phased approach, starting with the implementation of our front yard
–do the back yard ourselves in later phases.
–a native garden with less water and maintenance requirements,
–a native lawn for our children
–privacy since our front windows are large, but create a welcoming appeal, not a fortress.
We got everything we wanted and beauty and innovation as well. Vijaya of Hortus plussed the design with ideas of her own such as a half-​moon stone area in front of our door with an enormous pot to give us further privacy when we leave our front door open during mild weather.
We had the added benefit of having our designer (Kim Leichner of KL Designs) as our project manager. We were already comfortable working with Kim since she is our designer.
Vijaya was meticulous, and spent a lot of time on-​site when Kim wasn’t on-​site. She spent hours having the crew clean the tiniest debris and tweak the sprinklers until they were perfect.
We are very conservative in our spending, yet very picky in our work, and we’ve been waiting for years to find someone like Hortus who could meet our demands, yet do it at a reasonable price. We were utterly delighted, and found the experience so positive, that we’re seriously considering hiring Hortus again for the back even though we had originally planned to do it ourselves to save the money. They’re worth the price, and our entire front yard was done in four days.

Do yourself a favor and stay away. This company was quick to do our job, but the quality was extremely poor. The planting plan was haphazard at best. After waiting patiently for ~2years, some plants haven’t grown at all, some have outgrown a good size for their position. It seems like no attention was paid to the sun activity leading to wrong plants in certain areas which are just dead by now. To save money on disposal of waste, the grading of the landscape is just off. Parts of it have basically been used as dumping ground for extra dirt left over from the project. The grade was also uneven between the hardscape and the lawn making it a tripping hazard.
I happened to have old valves on my propery for irrigation. Contrary to contract which mandated replacing them, the contractor went ahead and reused the old ones. Within a few months, one of them (that controlled a drip system) broke such that it was always on. Being the novice home owners that we are, we did not realize it until the next water bill of 670 $! I asked the contractor to claim responsibility since they should have put in new valves, but no luck. A few months later, another valve broke and I had to pay out of pocket to get it replaced.
These are just some of the most glaring things that were wrong with the job. Overall, it just led to a landscape that we didn’t like spending time at, and have since spent several tens of thousands of dollars to correct this company’s mistakes.

I’m afraid our experience wasn’t quite the five stars that others here had. Our project involved a complete overhaul of both the front and back yard (demo’ing existing concrete, new travertine patio, flagstone pathways, native perennial planting, low-​voltage lighting, and new irrigation.) We got four estimates, and Hortus was second highest ($ 20k more than the lowest bid.) But based on the positive reviews on Unilocal and a couple of references she provided, we decided to go with them. Unfortunately, our experience was mixed.
First, the positive:
1. Vijaya was very responsive in answering questions and getting back to us in a timely manner.
2. She was on-​site once or twice a day to monitor the progress.
3. Her bid was complete and detailed, specifying exactly what she was going to do.
4. There were some upgrades she did that were not included in the bid, such as staining the vegetable bed and upgrading to a better quality lumber.
Negatives:
1. She is far too focused on cutting costs and saving (herself) money. Although she charged us for removal of debris, the material sat in our driveway for three weeks. It was later we realized she was listing the stuff on Craigslist, and having people come and take it away for her «free», or selling some of the things herself.
2. There were certain areas where she didn’t order enough material (flagstone, soil, mulch) even though we expressed concerns that there might be a short fall. In the end, the flagstone pathway looks sparse, the berms are just little mounds, and there are areas where the mulch is barely ½″ thick (rather than 2″ per her bid) and the weeds started growing through after only a few days.
3. Some of the plants she brought in were left over from a previous project she did six months earlier. They were not the plants that were specified on our designer’s plan. Moreover, they died after less than a month.
4. The workmen left 8 bags of trash (food, water bottles, soda cans, broken tools) that she would not haul away. We had to clean up after them, bag the garbage ourselves, and arrange for a separate pick-​up from the city.
For the price that we paid (over $ 50k), I was expecting a top-​notch, hassle-​free service.

We had the pleasure of working with Vijaya Gajjala and team at Hortus Design on a project to extend an arbor in our yard. Vijaya conducted a very thorough assessment of options, created designs and project managed the work. The builders completed the work in 3 days despite some rain. The arbor looks beautiful. I highly recommend Hortus for their professionalism and high quality work.

As an independent contractor, I have had the pleasure of working with
the Hortus Design team for several years now on a diverse spectrum
projects. The owner of the company is an extremely professional
business colleague as well as someone who is extraordinarily gifted in
her field. Her exemplary knowledge of sustainable landscaping puts
Hortus Design in a class by itself. Also, I rarely see firms give the
attentive type of customer service that Hortus provides to it
clientele without fail.

Hortus Design was involved in the implementation of our Front yard landscape. We were looking for a flexible team that would work with us in a phased approach that reduced our water usage and yet provided a nice yard. Hortus provided the initial demolition of existing landscape, implementation of our paver based walkway design, and initial planting of about a ¹⁄₃ of the plants. We found the owner of the company (Vijaya) to be very knowledgeable and helpful with suggestions. We plan to finish the other phases of the Landscape design in the spring.