Mother Earth Design

This company does not work in a professional manner and I would not recommend them to anyone.
They were recommended to me by the management company that handles the condo complex I live in. I checked Unilocal before calling them, but they didn’t have any reviews and now I know why. I spoke to whom I believe is the owner on the phone and told him what we needed done to some large concrete planter boxes in front of our building. Everything seemed great and he was personable and seemed trustworthy.
I finally received his proposal after sending him pics and an onsite consultation he did without me there. It was a good price so I told him we’d like to hire them but I had some questions about warranties and follow up care etc. I also sent him many images of other gardens we wanted to replicate and asked for a plant selection and schematic drawing.
He responded that they don’t warranty anything or provide follow up care for the plants they install, unless you hire them on a monthly basis. I wasn’t happy about them not offering follow up care, but he did say he’d give us several free months of care if we signed up for monthly follow up. I could live with that. I then asked him to select the plants after showing him pictures of similar gardens we wanted to mimic, and when I ran his selection by a landscape architect, she said his selections weren’t consistent with the watering needs of all the plants. I therefore picked all the plants and asked him to just make a pencil and paper drawing of where the plants would go and he said they weren’t willing to do any drawings without charging $ 500 min.
No problem, I can live without that too, but when I emailed him to ask about some other changes to the estimate he just never responded back. I was trying to work with him and had hoped he’d be open to working with us, but apparently he doesn’t need our business and shouldn’t get yours either.
I’m always shocked when small business owners act in this myopic and apathetic manner. I even told him that I had future work for him if this project went well and would be happy to recommend him to others too, but that didn’t matter and he felt ignoring a potential customer was the right thing to do for his business. Guess the economy really has turned around when you can just ignore jobs that are for thousands of dollars.
I know LA is a big city and there’s a tendency by small business owners to think there are plenty of customers, but word of mouth travels fast thanks to sites like Unilocal,so I suggest that you find a business owner who will be respectful of your time and efforts and have the confidence to engage in a dialogue about their work and costing instead of rudely ignoring your requests.