most common homeowner mistakes

[bobbygedd]

dont u just love it when they do thier own landscaping, and it always comes out looking sooooo stupid, and they think it looks good. what are the most common mistakes u noticed a homeowner makes when they do their own landscaping?

[GLAN]

Great post

We're gonna have a few giggles as this thread progresses.......:)

[crawdad]

Most common would have to be the big round dead spots from weedkiller, sometimes with "drip-paths" from one dead spot to another, from the hose-end sprayers.
Crawdad

[Grassmechanic]

Planting things too close to buildings, each other, etc. I especially get a chuckle when I see people plant trees within a few feet of their houses. They never allow for growth and a few years down the road everything looks cramped and confined. I also see a lot of shade tolerante plants planted in the full sun, and vise-versa. Then the homeowner will ask " Why is my plant not doing well". Another is people planting so much stuff that the place looks like a jungle. I could go on, but I'll let others take over now....

[NickN]

Just saw this the other day.Guy is doing his own retaining wall.Not very big mind you,but man is it looking like crap.He's got the first row done.No base and not one block is level.I can imagine what it's going to look like when he starts with the second row.I give till spring before it all comes tumbling down.His home is in a riverfront neighborhood.Just built.Around 350,000 to 400,000 dollar home.No lawn,just dirt that he's "tried" to level out.
Been thinking of handing him a card,but since my folks live in the same neighborhood,they've had a chance to speak to him.He's not a person I would want to do business with.

[KenH]

Where to begin. Roses in full shade, hostas in full sun. Underwatering/overwatering with irrigation systems. Pruning trees 1/2 way down the limb.

Ill think of more.

[bobbygedd]

my favorite, is when they put up a flagstone "wall", and dont backfill, and cant get the joints to fit close. then they plant their stupid rhodies, right next to a sargent juniper, and they are so low behind the wall, u can barely see them. then little mindy drives her tricycle into the wall, and it falls apart. and still, they think it looks good. i have a customer, in spring he wanted to reseed his back yard. not a blade of grass there, he brought in topsoil, seeded it, and grew a field of crabgrass. saw him last week, and said, "i told you so", hes like, "what do u mean, i think it looks great."

[GLAN]

New homeowner went to home depot and got those short white plastic picket fences.

Put around the front lawn. Just stuck it right into edge, couldn't get a w/b in there, unless removed one.

Rang the bell and showed them the problem. They were like, can't you lift the machine over? No........... what about a smaller machine............Ah good idea..............OK that will need 2 people to lift it over, one does the cutting, then it will need 2 people to remove the machine from the lawn. OK we can do that, now your weekly just doubled in price...............What?.....................What do you mean double?.........................the fence looks nice, can't you figure out some way to cut it?......................Nope I can't, tell you what, you figure out a way and let me know by next week.

Next week the fence is gone..................:blob3:

[rodfather]

Have a customer that wanted to put in some pacysandra in front of their house (full sun, not a bit of shade). Recommended to them not to. Customer say "Why? I thought ground cover like this loved the sun?" I said, "nope, it does better in shaded area". And then to really make him think about not doing it, I added, "and snakes like to go in there and cool themselves"...he's got a few little ones.

End of story. Guy puts in 38 flats (with mulch). Mulch survived, can't say so much for the 38 flats of pacysandra...LOL

[NNJLandman]

Guy insisted on not letting us install his shrubs he pruchased at the garden center he wanted to do it himself. well he put to weeping cherry trees within a foot of each other and then the rest...... lets jus put it this way....it wasn't what it woulda looked like if we had installed it.

[bobbygedd]

guy buys a rhodie, in burlap, plants 1/4 of the plant in the ground, leaves 3/4 above ground. i said, ummm, u may be up a little high with that. he said nope, the guy at the nursery told us to plant it this way.

[T.E.]

I have two accounts that water literally every day ,all day that i'm not there to mow. They both have the big guys come out and do their ferts.and their lawns will not green up. they are all bermuda lawns in the full sun,and when it was over a 100 degrees out this summer my 21' proline will sink in the lawn. Only good thing they both pay good prices.

[NCSULandscaper]

Originally posted by bobbygedd
guy buys a rhodie, in burlap, plants 1/4 of the plant in the ground, leaves 3/4 above ground. i said, ummm, u may be up a little high with that. he said nope, the guy at the nursery told us to plant it this way.

I would have told him the same thing. That way when it dies it will be easier to get out of the ground.

[NCSULandscaper]

I love it when homeowners, and a few professionals, pile so much mulch around the trunk of a tree and wonders why it died. And the ones who plant a tree ontop of the septic tank.

[galagers]

My favorite is when the owner tells you they think this will be the last cut for the season because of the drought. When the rain comes they try to cut it themselves and call for you to come fix it, promissing they will never do that again. Ensures they will follow directions and suggestions.

[mdvaden]

1. Fertilizing trees which causes excess foliage weight, especially when wet.

2. Instead of gentle mound contours - haystack slopes.

3. Rather than sprinkle just seed and a topdressing to repair lawns, they use that bagged garbage that heaps on grass blades at the perimeter - looks like vacuum bag crud spilled on the lawn.

4. Spacing is too close.

[Rick Jones]

One of my personal favorites is when they install that black plastic lawn edging, but they don't recess it into the ground at all. I have even some some so-called pros doing this.

Or flowers planted right at the edge of landscape beds that lay over onto the lawn and prevent you from getting anywhere close with the mower or trimmer.

I've got one customer who spot treats lawn weeds with a liberal application of Roundup. Makes for some nice bare spots!

[jwholden]

Thinking that it is as easy as we make it look. They all start out gung ho but the enthusiasm quickly fades...

[AGLA]

My personal favorite is when they fertilize with a drop spreader and fail to account for the space between the opening and the wheels. Then they follow the wheel tracks from one pass to the next. Then they get the striped lawn.

What is even funnier is that they think that they burned the part that is not green rather than that they had missed it completely.

[Stickman11]

Oh I have one that beats you all!!! Now I'm sure most of us have nice looking lawns and landscaping. Atleast the frontyard (curb appeal) due to our business. The backs I don't count due to kids and animals. Well.... I live in a neighborhood with an association($200.000 and up) and everyone tries to keep up with the "Jonses"( which is a good thing, thats how I built my business) but some of them in spite try to do it themselves, not to mention the countless minutes and hours they pick my brain for advise!! O.K....O.K. I'm getting to it be patient............My all time favorite just happens to be my next door neighbor, who I must admit would give me the shirt off his back....but refuses to ask me for help...and does he ever need HELP!! He has put 4 big huge islands in his front yard with nothing but perennials in them...now here's the kicker.......He has bordered all his beds with "house bricks" on end in a 45deg. angle. You know the ones with the "holes" exposed so you can see them. He has not bothered to even dig out and level, they are basically holding each other up with their weight. WAIT...... thats not all.. he also insists on putting all his grass clippings in the beds everytime he cuts the lawn for mulch to feed his plants. Have you all stopped laughing yet.. Now imagine coming home from work in August oh about 95deg. and humid as hell and smelling that S*#T! ....mmmmmmmm..........talk about your summer BBQ! Oh by the way I'm having a cookout next week want to come?? I have one more but I'll wait to see if anyone beats that.

[ProMo]

i had a customer plant 45 #3 plants but left them in the container

[broken leg]

How about this a man spends 250 thosand on landscape and looks half done . Hired a big shot out of Raleigh to draw it up. Imagen a house on a corner in the bottom of an ampth a theater 200 laurel's on the hillside with 400 ornamental grasses and to top it off used pine bark nuggets to mulch with. After first big rain all the drains stopped up and the bottom at the front porch is a swamp. The list is to long to go on. I just maintain his grass and that is another night mare. Some people are to rich for there on good.

[kootoomootoo]

My pet hate is the Home depot and lowes know it alls!
If some college kid earning $7 an hour, wearing a home depot
shirt said it then home owner takes it as gospel.

Throw that college degree away boys.


i had a customer plant 45 #3 plants but left them in the container

Seen this too!.

Just did an average $5000 lawn and landscape install and sure enough customer decides that he is more than qualified to install two unilock retaining walls. Sure enough 1in of base, not even close to being level and caps higher and lower everywhere. Cant wait to see what happen when this baby gets full of spring rain.

Customer offered to let us put a sign in yard ..............

.............thanks but no thanks!!!!!

[Grassmechanic]

Yeah, ya got to love those walls that have more waves than the ocean.

[A1 Lawn@Landscapes]

I had a customer install a retaining wall using the street as a base !!!! These were just the free standing no rod small mass market discount store $1.00 a block deal. They built it about 3 feet high. They asked me to fill in behind it with loam. No thanks. Don't want my name on that train wreck.

[A1 Lawn@Landscapes]

Just remembered my best one. This guy next door to one of my lawns runs out of trimmer line and decides to use bailing wire. Says it cuts great but it keeps flying out on him and he keeps having to replace the piece every few minutes !!!!!!!!!!!!!

[CWG]

dont u just love it when they do thier own landscaping, and it always comes out looking sooooo stupid, and they think it looks good. what are the most common mistakes u noticed a homeowner makes when they do their own landscaping?


Or better yet, how stupid home owners look when they pay for services and get laughed at! Oh, thats the best :blob3:

[out4now]

i had a customer plant 45 #3 plants but left them in the container
Saw this after a renovation by a contractor at a school district. When the people from the district came out and looked at it their jaws were on the ground. A very fast install done by an extremely large company.

[rough cut]

Disney (Epcot) used to plant most of their smaller landscaping in the pots. At night the landscape crew would pull the tired/wilted plants and drop in fresh ones from their off-site nursery. Some of the smaller trees stayed in the wooden crates and would be moved by forklift to allow changes in the landscape. They would then build up the ground with artificial fill and place the flowers around and finish with mulch. I think they stopped doing this due to high $$$ cost. This past spring my wife and I went to the Epcot flower festival and were very disappointed in the quality/variety.

[sheshovel]

Gosh where do I start?Of coarse the planting.Sticking anything that looks pretty to them all around here and there with no rhyme or rythum to it.
Don't even bother to check to see if it will live in their zone or not.Let alone if it will survive in the fuulhot sun or full shade they planted it in.Every plant a different kind no two the same..ends up looking like Lowes or Home depot just came by and puked in their front yard."Oh come by and look what we did this weekend to the garden""It looks oh sooo good now!"
Planting way way too deep and the tree looks 1/2 the size it really is with the trunk sticking out of a huge mound then the crown about 4' up.Or the lovely dangerous flagstone or slippery slate pathways they install,you go around a corner and almost eat the dirt when a stone tipps
sideways or up you step on,no base,no edge and the stones are like 5'apart and you might have to jump as far as you can or take 3 steps in bettween to reach the next one.
Also the ugly plastic pots and planters they decide to just sit in the garden hodge podge and different colors cuz they were on sale or 1/2 price.
I could go on and on into infinity,
but they also make work for me when they decide they need a professional to come in and fix the end result of their ideas and projects.

[YardPro]

have had customers decide to create a bedded area, so they gust plant a lot of stuff in the grass..... without killing the grass first..

personally, what i hate the most is that cheap plastic edging that you push down into the ground..i mean the little 12" individual pieces..... people byt this stuff, and just stick it in the ground.. no nice bedlines, nothing, not even level across the top.....

[TScapes]

Planting things too close to buildings, each other, etc. I especially get a chuckle when I see people plant trees within a few feet of their houses. They never allow for growth and a few years down the road everything looks cramped and confined. I also see a lot of shade tolerante plants planted in the full sun, and vise-versa. Then the homeowner will ask " Why is my plant not doing well". Another is people planting so much stuff that the place looks like a jungle. I could go on, but I'll let others take over now....


Heck I see this done in newly developed "High end" residential neighborhoods! But it is done by the developer or one of their subs! :dizzy:

[JS Landscaping]

Had a customer that claimed they installed a beutiful walkway themselves this past weekend in thier back yard, they were braggin up and down about it the second we pulled up to cut the lawn. So I walked around back to take a look. First off they had the stupid walmart special minature picket fence edging that you push in the ground as the edging for this walkway which was pebbles that you would find on a beach with multi colored steping stones with the little gem stones glued on top. Ever see these? they are horrible! so they had the stepping stones set in pebbles edged in this plastic picket fence crap that is about 6 inches high. to top it all off instead of buying landscape fabric. they used the plastic bags they bought the pebbles in as the felt! How in the world do people think this is good looking?


James
JS LANDSCAPING

[Billz]

Had a customer ask for an estimate for bark this year... 16 yards were needed. She almost fell over when I quoted her $600.00. She called at least 5 different companies to quote it too, we were the cheapest by far. She went to the gas station and bought 16 bags of bark and spread it very very thin. She laughed to her neighbor that she saved $550. A few days later we had a very windy day and a few heavy thunderstorms... When we came to mow the following week, there was no bark there. She asked me if we had taken it...LOL

[Dirty Water]

My personal favorite happened last month, I did a irrigation install some time ago for a customer and he called me back last month.

He has a small yard in the back watered by spray heads, and he decided to add a raised rose bed right SMACK in the middle of it.

He was concerned about the fact that all his roses were diseased.

I changed a bunch of nozzles around managed to get decent coverage without soaking the roses...but still...what ever happened to common sense?

[LandscapeSolutions]

If you want an example of s***y landscaping all you have to do it visit my neighbors! They're redneck, well over 50% redneck. They started with one pond in their backyard years ago. Then they decided they needed another...and then another. Ends up they have three puddles in their backyard as of now. Of course there might be one thats hidden by all the weeds........ They cant even build them right. Instead of proper pond liner the idiot was using thick plastic sheathing! The landscaping is just horrible...I mean horrible. I ought to take a picture and post it on here. If my landscape design professor saw their house, he'd be laughing his a** off!

Their front yard is just crabgrass. It was funny though, this past spring the idiot wanted to 're-seed' the lawn. So out he goes and scalps all the bermuda thinking he has it killed. Then he spreads seed and waters the crap outta the lawn. Some of the seed came up....but the crabgrass beat the seed by a long shot! Needless to say the bermuda is making a comeback and the fescue seed was pretty much a waste since the crabgrass has already choked it out! He still waters the lawn....I guess he thinks the crabgrass is the fescue seed he planted. Im sure he's REAL proud of that crabgrass lawn of his. :rolleyes: All the landscaping in their front yard is a dumb 3'x3' bed around the lamp post.....and in each of the four corners is a mum. I bet the mums die within a year though. From the street, passers by get a real nice sight of their foundation.....it sure is perdy! NOT! :realmad: I bet their house de-values all the others on my block!

Ill try and get pictures up sometime next week.....

[strickdad]

this has got to be the most common, guy goes down to local lowes and buys a couple of hundred pounds of high dollar grass seed then he is lookin at fert and he thinks to himself im gonna try that scotts weed and feed (you can see this coming) im goona get me some new grass and kill some weeds all in one shot.. a month later he is calling us to find out why his seed didnt come up..

[waffletown20]

I hate the look of plastic edging in any application. What a total waste of money. Also, I have a friend who my brother did some landscaping for. They had this ugly red dye mulch and my brother suggested a brown mulch. Every body in the area has brown or black dye. They reluctantly agreed and it turned out really great. In fact, it held up for the next year without a single weed and didn't need another round. Well, they decided to try it themselves and ended up buying 90 bags of red dye mulch, it was on sale - no surprise. It looks terrible now because it's spread very thin and next to the pink bricks just doesn't go, there's no contrast. The only contrast is the red mulch and green grass, atleast they won't need to put up christmas decorations.

Another house has a very large bed along the road of their front yard that had brown mulch. It looked out of place but not terrible. They got tired of weeding it so they came up with the brilliant solution of dumping river stones completely over the bed. They only did it to that bed right against the road. The only place for river stones is pools. I should take a pic, it looks so bad and it has weeds popping up through it. I hope they did that work themselves because any company who would do that is frightening.

[trying 2b organic]

The river stones is all the rage here now. Its sold as a "dry creek bed". Its going to cost A LOT of money to remove them when the fad ends. :help:

[turfcobob]

Guy had this nice stone wall around his back lawn and planted trees right next to it. Now a few years later his nice stone wall is being destroyed by the tree roots pushing it up and cracking it. He has a choice now...KIll the trees he waited so long for or loose his wall..

Moral check to see what kind of root the tree will have when it gets big if you want it to be by a wall....

Turfcobob

[Branchland]

The homeowner puts out their own fetilizer. By hand not with a spreader. Then asks why they have dead steaks all over the yard.

[rodfather]

The homeowner puts out their own fetilizer. By hand not with a spreader. Then asks why they have dead steaks all over the yard.

Kind of reminds me of someone feeding chickens LOL...

[Lux Lawn]

How about when they use a drop spreader and skip lines...it kind of reminds me of the old fruit stripped gum from years ago.

[rodfather]

How about when they use a drop spreader and skip lines...it kind of reminds me of the old fruit stripped gum from years ago.

LMAO, be careful Larry...you're really showing your age with that one. Had to think about that for a sec.

[prizeprop]

Not my experience but another landscapers experience. Homeowner orders plants to be delivered and when he drops them off person wants them put in the garage,so he does. Couple weeks later customer calls and says the plants dont look so good can you come out to take a look. Landscaper goes out to take a look and doesnt see the plants, so he knocks on the door and the person says their in the garage. He went to China for 2 weeks and left them in the garage lol.

[Guthrie&Co]

or wants a block wall built and doest account for the row/rows that you have to put underground to keep it from falling over. then asks why do i need more block and why are you so high. i bought the material.....

[Updog]

My favorite is guys on here that think they know what they are talking about. You do plant two thirds of a rhodo above ground and mound mulch around it thats how they grow in nature and the best way to plant them. I wouldn't make fun of someone if I din't know my stuff first.

[bobbygedd]

My favorite is guys on here that think they know what they are talking about. You do plant two thirds of a rhodo above ground and mound mulch around it thats how they grow in nature and the best way to plant them. I wouldn't make fun of someone if I din't know my stuff first.
interesting, very interesting. so, i been doing it wrong all these years? hmmm, let me think about this....i plant them "wrong", they live, and do very good for years and years. ya, maybe i need to start planting them 75% above ground, so that the next breeze that comes by, knocks them over. :dizzy:

[betterlawn]

Not my experience but another landscapers experience. Homeowner orders plants to be delivered and when he drops them off person wants them put in the garage,so he does. Couple weeks later customer calls and says the plants dont look so good can you come out to take a look. Landscaper goes out to take a look and doesnt see the plants, so he knocks on the door and the person says their in the garage. He went to China for 2 weeks and left them in the garage lol.

I was helping out a fundraiser for my church, getting Poinsettias for wholesale and passing them along. A woman buys a dozen for her office (paid for by her company). She picks them up on a Friday and calls Monday frantic because they are all dead.

It turns out she left them in her car in the garage (in December). :dizzy: She actually expected us to do something about it! Everything was pre-ordered, so we sold her what was leftover at cost just to get rid of them.

That and we had these nice little flyers that went home with every plant that talked about how to take care of them (getting them inside quickly being #1 on the list).

[GreenUtah]

Let's see...I've seen the hand tossed fert,(from a "pro" even) I've encountered many, many plants still in their pots planted into the ground( Why did this tree die from root girdle three years after they planted it? or thunk-thunk with the root feeder) I've seen 40 foot tall trees(grow in height) planted right against foundations, three feet from each other for that "instant landscape look", I've seen multi milliondollar homes with rotors and popups not only on the same zone, but inches away from each other, the same with brick "walkways" laid ride on top of growing turf (They'll settle in, right?) I've seen annuals planted tied to painted popsicle sticks, because"the petunias just don't stand up enough" but my all time favorite has to be every single time I walk into the backyard of a home and see a sea of turf meeting fence with nothing else in the yard. I wonder if their homes have the "unrented apartment" look inside as well, white walls, carpet, nothing else.

[DBL]

You guys have some good ones and i hope mine matches up. I think the best is the guys who cut their lawns at about 2 inches in hopes of only cutting their lawns onces a month. I once had a customer who asked me to do that and I just couldnt do it I was afraid to but i did it and it and the grass died and the only thing id cut (once a month) was giant patches of weeds.

[all ferris]

I bid a yard last year to do finish grading, drain tile, seed, fert, and straw. I gave the guy the bid and he ask if he could do the drain tile himself so I said sure. I told the guy it would be best if I did the seeded the yard in the fall or sometime in early april. He said he wanted done asap (feburary). So I went there at the end of feburary to do this job and the tile had not been buried yet so I did all the work ($2500) and as I was leaving the guy goes out WITH A SHOVEL to start burying 250' of tile. Not only did he tear up my work but he actually called me back to see if I would bury the drain tile because it harder to do than he thought. I told him NO. :realmad:


I also had a guy I gave a bid on spraying round up on a new construction house 2 acre lot. I gave him the bid and he flipped out saying he couldn't believe how much it was. he said he would do it himself WITH A BACKPACK SPRAYER. Guess who he called about 15 minutes after he started.

[SpudsM15]

How about the people that actually cut out sod for their beds.... but do not add any soil so the landscaping is lower than the lawn by 3"...
Retaining walls are always trainwrecks....What is up with people putting the blocks up side down with the lip on the top????? Then not building up behind the wall the the landscaping is the same height as the lawn in front of the 1' high wall???

Or lets line everything with those solar lights so, one I have to turn around on the lawn and then do all that extra trimming....
Then the classic spray roundup and then walk ontop of it...walk on the lawn, then they have brown footsteps on the lawn...
Put the solar pool cover out on your front lawn to dry on a 90 degree day.... But forget to pick it up after it dries and leave it out for a few hours...The lawn also didn't like the clorine water that was rinsed off the cover....

Hum... What else spreading 22yds of moist black dyed mulch with their hands, with no gloves and not washing for the whole day.....never releized how long the dye lasts....