Lucas Wade Farden

Ditto the previous 9÷5÷2015 review from Alex A. Luke did some of the work I requested, skipped some of it, left tree branches pruned from my apple trees scattered across my lawn, applied only a fraction of the moss killer I paid him to apply. He did not return my phone calls requesting his return and follow up, he just disappeared.
He seems to be a nice, well meaning guy, but… his unprofessional work says that something else is going on here.

I really wrestled with whether or not to write this review. The «wrestle» part was owing to the fact that Luke is a very nice man. He is polite, he is responsive, he is kind, he is intelligent, and he is exceptionally customer friendly. Note that I did not say customer service oriented.
Luke showed up at my home for my yard clean up consisting of rock and mulch, tree trimming, gutter cleaning, etc., service and I appreciated his attentive listening style right away. I did notice, however, that he wasn’t taking any notes. We went through the whole project and he didn’t write a single thing down. Perhaps I should’ve spoken at that moment and said «hey, why don’t we write this down so you don’t forget.» That is not my role as the customer, though.
I received the bid almost on time, and while it was high, it didn’t seem unreasonable for the large amount of work I was asking Luke to perform. I accepted his fee schedule and he started right away. Another thing that I noticed was that Luke kept referring to «we» as though he had a landscape crew, but in fact, it was just Luke. The acceptance of the bid was predicated on the illusion in my mind that multiple people would be coming to my home to complete the job. I should’ve asked.
When Luke «completed» the job less than 12 hours into beginning, it never occurred to me that he had not actually completed it when I paid him. He said the gutters were cleaned, they were not. He said he would put weed cloth under the mulch. There is some shelf liner under a small area of the mulch and that is all. He said he would put rock on the driveway with weed cloth. He did not. He put mulch with no weed cloth instead. He said he would trim the side yard between my house and the neighbors. He did not. He said he would weed the front beds before putting mulch down and apply weed cloth again. He did not. He took out my poppy’s and left the weeds. He took out other perennial plants and left the weeds. He did not do the job I hired him and paid him to do.
I should not have paid him, but it never occurred to me that his whole customer friendly, nice guy front was simply that. Anyway, in the end, he got paid close to $ 100 an hour to do a really crappy job. I ended up paying someone else to come in that I would highly recommend who worked for a reasonable price and did a beautiful job.
Luke is a nice guy. Luke is not a landscape professional. He doesn’t know the difference in a weed and a plant that you wanted to keep and he certainly will not complete the job that you hired him to do. Do yourself a favor, and call someone else.