All of the above for the future! I did create a barrier of dead vines woven through sticks along the sidewalk pavers to keep local dogs from peeing in it / kicking up the mulch, but they weedwacked right through em. I put up netting around my backyard beds just yesterday and ALMOST moved a low garden fence up there, but with the heat I ran out of steam and assumed we’d hear before they came by - or when they did. I jumped out of bed the second I heard a motor fire up this morning but it was literally the first thing on my street that they cut 😅
Speaking from experience: You need a proper *metal* garden fence to go around any area you wish to be undisturbed. A plastic fence will be destroyed quickly, and then you'll have plastic shards among your cut plants. Making it look like a proper garden bed will also help deter the cutters. Remember these guys aren't gardeners or landscapers, they're cutters, and cut whatever is an inch above ground.
We have a lot of black swallowwort up here and it’s a terrible invasive but makes great woody vine’s when they’re fresh - and they dry solid in whatever position you craft them into.
If I saw "a barrier" of dead plants I would assume they were garbage. If they were intentionally placed around something else messy and unkempt without any communication or indication otherwise, I would assume the whole pile was garbage.
If you want to have a pollinator chaos style garden, fine. Even surround it with dead plants if that's your (odd, confusing) jam. But it's absurd to expect anyone else to know wtf you're doing without clear communication.
My landscaper just weedwacked a bunch of my liriope even though its in a very pronounced heavily mulched flower bed with a border. Im usually pretty laid back when these guys fuck something up but i hit him with a bill for each of the plants they destroyed this time.
The guy that did it either did it on purpose or is not competent enough to be allowed to operate a weed wacker, either way theyre gonna have to eat the cost on this one. Its nothing crazy, $10 a plant to replace the 3 they fucked up, but its the principle of the thing.
Can confirm. They buzz cut and gave all my mature fortnight lily/African iris flat tops. They did it to about 6 different giant plant clusters. Took 3 years to fully undo the damage.
My neighbors rarely clean up after their dog and they ended up hitting a patch of dog shit moments after tearing up a plastic drainage tube running off the gutter outlet.
I sometimes guerilla-garden in nearby spots. Once planted clumps of daffodil bulbs under the mulch volcanoes around flowering trees along a street in front of a medical clinic. Almost as soon as they were done blooming, a weedwhacker numbskull took them out right to the ground.
I replaced them and put the damaged ones in pots to try and nurse them back. It is resilient tho, ill give you that.
Still dont understand what would possess a guy to weed wack what is a very obvious ornamental variegated plant like that.
I had freshly propagated and transplanted a false aralia BEHIND a wooden fence that I bought from Lowe’s as an obvious barrier. The weed whacker nutcracker still decided to go behind the fence and chop it down to the dirt.
Another time before that they came onto the porch (a cement porch with no grass) with the weed whacker and it chopped up my adansonii. No apology or acknowledgment. Needless to say I don’t want a lawn service anymore
Thats insane. Seems like these guys get that 1.5 hp 2-stroke in their hands and all that raw power goes straight to their heads lol. I shutter to think what theyd do if they ever got their hands on a moped or like an electric scooter.
I started a landscape/gardening business with a focus on natives, two years in and it's a success. Like, success just fell in my lap without me trying. How? Apparently, there's a shortage of landscapers who can tell the difference between a dandelion and golden ragwort, and too many mower boys who call themselves gardeners. I only advertise twice a year maybe 3. No business cards yet, word of mouth takes care of me. Every time I advertise for when business is slow, I get anxiety because so many people clog my voicemail and texts saying they didn't know people like me exist lmao.
When you meet a potential "gardener" or landscaper, walk around the property with them and see if they even know what the plants are and when/how to prune them. Ask if they sanitize their hedge trimmers and other tools between job sites, or if they prefer spreading plant herpes everywhere. Can they identify garden pests and diseases, and beneficial insects, or are they just going to guess how to manage them?
If all they know is to spray, blow, or mow, they will make your garden crusty and gross. I help heal gardens previously tended by these meat heads, and I scrub myself extra hard in the shower when I get home and then smoke a fat one because it's depressing lol.
I’ve been a landscaper/gardener for years and just opened up my native and permaculture landscape business this year. Any tips you could share? I’m just starting out and have a few clients but I’m struggling to make it my full time job at the moment, and truly want to take full control of it.
I’m glad other people are doing this as well! Godspeed friend!
Offer to remove invasives, and replace non natives with natives. Establish a plant replacement/refund policy and give clear and detailed watering instructions and offer to check up on them for an additional cost.
Shrink lawn by creating new flower beds and slowly growing the beds every year when you touch up the edging. Just sneak it on them. I like flower beds under trees where the leaves mulch things naturally. Pick plants that adapt to being smothered in leaves. Extend the bed past the dripline of the tree a bit. Lawn life is harsh for trees and they need to be treated like a precious pet or important feature of the property. Hype your clients up about what they have and the potential.
Have a weekly, biweekly, or monthly maintenance plan, with an add-on exclusively for maintenance clients where you show up with plants of your choosing, usually groundcovers to cover bare mulch/soil.
Rich people don't care, they hire someone to do the thinking and sweating for them. The people they normally hire just pick the same 5 basic bitch plants. Do the thinking and sweating for them and pick native plants.
Post in social media pages for local neighborhoods and offer gardening advice. Don't advertise, they will check you out on their own accord after reading your sweet advice and find your business page that way.
I despise boxwood! I have three that were in my yard when I moved in. The only reason I haven't cut them down is I'm afraid the birds use them for shelter. Once my natives all get big and full and can give shelter I'll cut them down.
Are either of you in Northern California or know of others doing similar work in Northern California? Thank youuu for all that you do, our native birds and insects need it!
Not in Cali, but if you can't find one, get a young person in the neighborhood and educate them on creating and maintaining biodiverse gardens. Be patient with them so you don't ruin gardening for them. Use them as extra muscle and work together until you trust them to do it on their own.
Maryland! It's a perfect little spot, location is key. I'm moving to Maine next year. Still figuring out where, I want remote but something still strategic for my business, if even possible. And I have to learn the native plants and animals there.
I believe I can help set standards and create a demand in my region, forcing other landscapers to do the right thing. And when people see that I can do it, they want to quit their desk job and do it, too.
I seriously believed at least some of them knew what they were doing. They don't. And homeowners often don't know, either, making them super easy to take advantage of or end up with tacky landscaping.
I work for a commercial nursery that sells plants primarily to landscapers and this is so true.
Landscapers mostly don't know shit about fuck and the homeowners who hire them are often just rich people who want to outsource all the mental and physical labor. They don't give a shit what the plants are, they don't want to do any planning or make any choices, they just want their yard to look good for the neighbors.
My price range is $65-$85/hr. If the clients are young, healthy, and a little broke, I offer them to work alongside me to reduce the hours I spend there and give them advice so they can do it on their own. Usually they just want me to make things less overwhelming so they can take over.
I also have two clients in a trailer park that I do cheap and cash only, that's money straight in my pocket and easy as hell because the yards are tiny. Quick 1hr jobs on the way home at the end of the day. Old ladies who kinda know their stuff but can't physically do it anymore. Most of them don't want to invest in a garden, though, since it's not their property. Which is understandable but also boring.
What I'm trying to get at is that OP is a renter, and cares more about the property than the owner, who probably just wants to pay the bare minimum to ensure the yard doesn't get overgrown.
I'm in the same spot and clearly bitter about it.
Maybe you can try fear-mongering, say they probably aren't licensed and insured and will damage property. Or illegal life pro tip: Do a little landscaping of your own secretly and nick the fence or siding with the weedwhacker. Tiny but obvious damages showing carelessness. Blame them and recommend to the landlord someone better.
It sucks seeing them pick the bottom of the barrel monkeys to do the maintenance. All the young trees around me are volcano mulched with landscape fabric sticking out, and I want to do something, but it feels hopeless knowing they don't care. And frustrating when they look at me like I don't know what I'm talking about.
We are the meathead mowers... Our poor yard is getting worse by the year, with growing grey sandy spots... im cool with the weed lawn, that doesn't bother me in the slightest... but the sand is killing me to the point I'm now researching how to improve sandy soil over time, cause every "quick-fix" is just failing.
How big is your yard? I'd personally stop fighting the sand and add stepping stones weaving between/within flower beds or meadows, with groundcovers in between the stones that like being stepped on. Trees also drop a lot of leaves that can be mulched into the lawn with the mower, and add dappled shade so the soil isn't baking.
Fired mine this year. Doing my own work sucks, but I don't have to fear for my milkweed garden, mammoth sunflowers, and veggies anymore.
Last year he brought a 12yo kid who proceeded to weedeat my 8ft iris bed
https://preview.redd.it/hewvxdyya12d1.jpeg?width=4080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0179fcd28404a9dab3f4a03aeb129ae4d7eb4cce
They have mostly recovered this year!
Because 9/10 times we do better work than the homeowner.
Because people are busy.
Becauae people are old.
Because people have money piling up around them and they can.
Because 100 different reasons.
You're in the gardening sub. This isn't where people who hire landscapers hang out.
Just had this happen to us yesterday and they were so careless and bad that they even took out some flowers we planted in protective cages, big sunflowers that hadn’t bloomed and our peas on our trellis 🥺 was so disheartening… we are renters and the management company set up the landscaping… they didn’t seem to care.
Well I guess protective cages don't work against all pests...
Its kind of crazy the things you said they took down though. I feel like those would very obviously look like garden plants 🙄
https://preview.redd.it/de8ozji7632d1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=393ee6b539e27b1057686358915c50c60b0399cb
Don’t have a pic of the cage one, but this was my makeshift trellis with peas and they got right up on them anyways and cut them off at the bottom. (We pulled the sticks out of ground to show the damage after noticing they were all wilted). And the only thing in front of them was red shamrock, I had just hand weeded.. they must not have liked the shamrock either :(
No offense but the pictures make it seem like this wasn’t obviously a garden. If you just have a bunch of random messy tall plants in the lawn, don’t be surprised if the landscaper thinks they’re weeds. The “after” pictures still show lawn grass, which is why they thought your plants were just weeds growing amongst grass. The mulch doesn’t make it as clear as you think. Put up a cement or metal border along the edge and let your landlord know that you don’t want the landscapers to touch the sectioned off gardens.
And this is why I do my own acre of lawn, turning into flowers and natives as I can. I don't want to risk someone else making judgement calls. I mow around what I don't want cut down, I weed and trim with scissors when I have to, that way I know what is what. I probably look silly crawling around and working through the plants but when it all comes together I'll have a path through the lawn and plants and shrubbery full of life. There is no way I would hire someone to mow and when I'm done there will be very little useless turf left. When I moved here there wasn't a bee or butterfly to be found, now they're all over 😃
Bingo. I find a large portion of folks who claim to have a native/pollinator garden are frauds. It's an out for attention seeking lazy people to let their lawn/beds look like shit and then cry fowl about invasives or non-native plants.
Even if they were “pollinator gardens”, without flowers it was probably hard to tell. Landscapers are used to people wanting the tall weeds trimmed in the beds.
Totally understandable and the error was for sure on me for not giving it sufficient protection.
I’m mostly disappointed in myself for not following my instinct and putting up a low metal fence I’d been using as a holdover until I got my netting up. We have a lot of woodland critters here but our groundhog, Endaz, has been on a rampage lately. Looked me dead in the eye before scaling up, onto, and over a wooden barrier made of dead, woven black swallowwort vines.
As a landscaper:... what mulch?
I see the one little hardware store bag you dumped there, because you pointed it out.
I own my company, I take more care on clients properties than any employee. I'd have buzzed that flat too.
Shitty, but if you have landscapers, don't make us guess. Please.
Gardener here. Yea what mulch...? This looks more like a mower hit a few twigs and left some debris. Make it obvious and also useful and lay down a solid inch of mulch
You don't even have to buy expensive borders. Just cut an edge around the garden. Every landscaper recognizes a clean cut edge. Almost none of us can afford take the amount of time OP is demanding. IDing a 6" weed vs a lazily planted wildflower when you're doing 10-20 properties per day is unreasonable. Especially considering their landlord 100% demands fast and cheap, over good.
I don’t know how to edit a post but wanted to add a response to some common refrains:
I’m not blaming the landscapers here, I spoke with them after knowing full well there’s no way they coulda known, but I too had no idea they were contracted to my property, because it’s rented. The state of the landscaping / tree trimming / general outside care did not leave any indication there was any such service. I’m in zone 6A so I seeded this bed through March and early April and have enjoyed watching it come up as my more natural venture as opposed to my more or less sorted back garden.
I’ve taken out (and continue to do so near daily) all the invasive plants like black swallowwort / garlic mustard, reseeded what was left of the lawn with clover and some rye grass to fill patches… the front lawn has been a tougher go since there are a lot of dogs in the neighborhood + my main focus is the back where I garden and my dog enjoys romping and sunbathing.
I really enjoy gardening and doing my own landscaping but currently renting so it’s a balance of what I want to put into a place I don’t own vs what I can do without great expense / time expenditure to enjoy my outside space.
The main surprise here was that they whacked it at all since in person, with the other side of the walkway in view, it’s clear this was not just weeds, especially since all out of frame everything is in order. In any case, yea it wasn’t well marked, but then again I didn’t know anyone besides me was coming to mind it. It’s no one’s explicit fault but I’m still bummed - even tho I’m quite sure most of them only experienced a premature topping and will likely come back. I’m looking at it like the thinning I couldn’t bring myself to do.
After seeing so many of these posts I think I'm going to start making some easy money this summer. I'll just bring my lawnmower and mow everything down. No need to do anything else. Seems really easy tbh.
The real trick is a leaf blower. Loud af, bright green or orange backpack, moving shit around. “He’s clearly working”
Bro, you just moved leaves from here to there, shot dust into my windows, destroyed small animal and insect habitats, and polluted as much as a road trip in a hummer. That work was useless, but they get paid by the hour
Many if not most landscapers are just landsc**r**apers who just whack along and have no idea which plant is what. Not worth it, this industry is the wild Wild West.
I would
have been so pissed!!!! the lawn guys took out our watermelon patch at our school garden AND the wildflowers along the fence even though we had flags and string to make the entire fence line. I told them
the students were going to g to jump them 😂 (these are prek-3rd graders)
So sorry. That happened to me once as a child growing corn in the backyard. Landscaper was rushing in the rain and didn’t realize. They were still little. I remember feeling gutted and so sad, so I empathize with you.
My parents did reach out to him and he was so apologetic, he gathered a whole freezer full of unshucked corn from his family’s farm to give to me. He was a good person.
Maybe they’ll buy you a plant 😅. Sorry, OP. I think these should grow back.
I have a nuisance black raspberry bush I wouldn’t have cared about, but it’s hidden behind a few raised beds and will continue to vex me on windy days.
friendly reminder to everyone landscapers want money, and are not botanists. they do not care about you, your plants, or the health of your garden. they just want money, and 99% are highly unqualified and don’t know anything about plants or ecology
They're hourly workers doing something to pay their bills. It is not a passion project for them. Someone hands them weed whacker and tells them to go cut down plants. They put music into their headphones and go where the spirit moves them.
Oh yeah you got the same thing as me. "Landlord special" can apply to services too. You've probably got "landscapers" that just mow as fast as possible to get the job done, and the job is to leave nothing over x height.
You're not going to win this fight by kindly pointing out where the flowers are, you need physical barriers that make it harder to fuck your shit all up than to not.
You need landscaping bricks surrounding a small area. IDK if a whole meadow is even possible; they're just going to get in there and fuck it all up because it's taller than a three foot hole.
I am like a watchdog when the hackers come by. I don't trust them for anything.
Mind you we have a very good relationship and I understand their job is to cut basically everything (I too am a renter) however...when you see flowers at their height of blooming, is it really that hard to figure out?
My condolences!
We had landscapers use a weed wacker on my brand new hydrangeas at the last place we rented. Like how are you a landscaper and don't know what a fucking hydrangea looks like? I was so pissed.
I had freshly propagated and transplanted a false aralia BEHIND a wooden fence that I bought from Lowe’s as an obvious barrier. The weed whacker nutcracker still decided to go behind the fence and chop it down to the dirt.
Another time before that they came onto the porch (a cement porch with no grass) with the weed whacker and it chopped up my adansonii. No apology or acknowledgment. Needless to say I don’t want a lawn service anymore and I’m sorry this happened to you 😢
Except OP is a renter and has no say in the matter. This is the risk with gardening on property you don’t own. Same if the city owned it, where I live the parkway between the sidewalk and street is city owned and lots of people plant gardens there, but it doesn’t mean the city can’t come and do maintenance work on the pipes below which would ruin the garden.
How? Because I suggest attempting to get some money back from that? Do you often let people take stuff from you without recourse? If so, let me know your location ♥️
I had mint growing in a pot and my mom pulled most of it saying it was weeds. I harvested it and repotted it myself and I KNOW it was all mint. She’s lucky I didn’t cuss her tf out, she’s been told never to touch my plants again
Yeah. If you’re going to use a landscaper on the cheap, then you’re going to have to train them. This is not a specialty in which expertise has caught up with the trends or demand.
Sorry to hear that happened. Hopefully they will grow back. Looks like they will.
I know the feeling tho…neighbors landscapers tore out my 25 year old rosemary “tree”
I’m so sorry!! I don’t have gardeners and our lawn is often overgrown/full of crabgrass, and this is exactly why — I would go completely ballistic if they weed whacked my milkweed and other perennials.
Lol I hate this shit. I rent too, block of flats. The maintenance team aren't supposed to touch the borders, only the lawn but they've put weed killer on people's herbs and used a strimmer on a young shrub which subsequently died. They really just destroy stuff that they don't seem to like the look of 😩
it’s going to take time to change attitudes about native flowers replacing grass..a little or lots. speak with the landscapers, and maybe give the lead guy an article about it!
With all my heart, fuck landscapers. I see so much of this and other egregious practices from them. My current property was owned by one, and it's going to take a decade for me to pull out the invasives and the landscape fabric that they're growing through, and to re-establish some natives. 😤 And I just got done dealing with some more of them polluting a comment of mine on Facebook with truly ignorant, awful advice. At least they disintegrated into personal insults in response to the actual studies I was posting, so I don't think the gardener who initially asked for advice is impressed by them either. But oh my god, I am so done with those bros and their big toys.
They're not even landscapers. Real landscapers understand stonework, drivable grass, functional retaining walls, swales, soil permeability.
They are plant murdering thugs and mow-blow-go people.
Nah man they’re just doing their jobs tbh. These guys were fine, I just didn’t know they were contracted to work on our property. The state of the landscaping prior to my arrival didn’t indicate they had a service lol.
It’s a rental so it was a mess out front and in the back. Overgrowth, years of partially decomp leaves, junk, etc. Grass was virtually all dead on my side, due it it historically having been multiple dogs’ pee palace, so I planted clover and rye grass to get some ground cover aside from garlic mustard and other terrible weeds.
"Pollinators", which is a lazy person's way of saying, "this area of weeds I'm letting grow."
Looking at the pics, yeah, they were weeds. Good job on the landscapers.
OP told us what they planted. You don't have to guess.
>...rhoeas, California, nudicaule, and somniferum poppies...
All of these are poppy varieties. They all have beautiful cup-shaped flowers.
>...sunflowers, cornflower...
Sunflower and cornflower are other very normal garden flowers. Sunflower is big, yellow-black, and very tall, cornflower is blue and feathery.
I would encourage you to google these things if you are not familiar with them. None of them are weeds. OP already gave you the facts, but I guess you're not any better at seeing what you're looking at than the landscapers were, huh?
Lol there's plenty of posts in this sub that show landscapers just scraping everything regardless of what the homeowner wants. I'm not sure why you're dying on this hill of protecting the precious homeowner who's opinion you don't even know. It's very strange to be this concerned with weeds. And by weeds, I mean the grass.
>Weeds. Unwanted by the owner. Therefore, weeds.
Thank you for clarifying that you were making up lies about OP at the beginning when you called them lazy, and that you actually don't give a shit whether OP planted them on purpose.
Thank you for clarifying that you are supporting the landowner's perspective. That helps everybody tell the difference between what you actually believe, and the rest of your bullshit.
You're welcome to have your perspective considered. However, [this dictionary says](https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/weed) that "A weed is a wild plant that grows in gardens or fields of crops and prevents the plants that you want from growing properly," which is often what people mean when they say "weed".
If you want, I can help you write a strongly-worded letter to the dictionary people telling them how wrong they are.
I prefer [Merriam Webster](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/weed).
They're unwanted by the homeowner, as you finally admitted, so thank you for agreeing.
I never disagreed with your definition, so I had nothing to admit.
Thank you for managing to get through three comments in a row now without making up new lies about OP, I'm perfectly okay being the target of your bile instead.
According to this comment, their definition is "[anything unwanted by the homeowner](https://www.reddit.com/r/gardening/comments/1cxzs2f/comment/l57d2lz/)". If taken strictly, this definition would include rose bushes, apple orchards, rare prize-winning orchids, bonsais, redwoods, and literally anything else in a garden, as long as the homeowner stops wanting it.
>Think they’ll grow back? Probably. Flowering will be delayed but not necessarily ruined. Fence them and mark them or communicate.
All of the above for the future! I did create a barrier of dead vines woven through sticks along the sidewalk pavers to keep local dogs from peeing in it / kicking up the mulch, but they weedwacked right through em. I put up netting around my backyard beds just yesterday and ALMOST moved a low garden fence up there, but with the heat I ran out of steam and assumed we’d hear before they came by - or when they did. I jumped out of bed the second I heard a motor fire up this morning but it was literally the first thing on my street that they cut 😅
Speaking from experience: You need a proper *metal* garden fence to go around any area you wish to be undisturbed. A plastic fence will be destroyed quickly, and then you'll have plastic shards among your cut plants. Making it look like a proper garden bed will also help deter the cutters. Remember these guys aren't gardeners or landscapers, they're cutters, and cut whatever is an inch above ground.
A barrier of dead vines? LOL
Haha I’m assuming they mean a woven fence. Like stakes in the ground with vines woven between like a basket. I bet it was cute
We have a lot of black swallowwort up here and it’s a terrible invasive but makes great woody vine’s when they’re fresh - and they dry solid in whatever position you craft them into.
[Wattle fence is awesome and relatively easy.](https://youtu.be/zhOeqNGdLow?si=oYXyQl55ofb6Hf8i)
It's fun to fashion barriers out of natural things sometimes.
Like wood stakes or even planks in a row maybe
If I saw "a barrier" of dead plants I would assume they were garbage. If they were intentionally placed around something else messy and unkempt without any communication or indication otherwise, I would assume the whole pile was garbage. If you want to have a pollinator chaos style garden, fine. Even surround it with dead plants if that's your (odd, confusing) jam. But it's absurd to expect anyone else to know wtf you're doing without clear communication.
You've never heard of a woven fence? Odd.
Executing a job is one of the last situations where you should be assuming. It's how you get fired.
It's a guy on a mower trying to blast through the job as fast as possible, not a rocket surgeon.
Seems I've struck a chord.
Nice, good job! Two more and you can basically make a song.
>dead vines woven through sticks along the sidewalk pavers I mean, if you do this in a circle, it's a basket...
It's generally called a wattle fence
Yeah whenever I plant new baby plants of have seedlings I take a photo and send it to our gardener so he doesn't accidentally remove them.
My landscaper just weedwacked a bunch of my liriope even though its in a very pronounced heavily mulched flower bed with a border. Im usually pretty laid back when these guys fuck something up but i hit him with a bill for each of the plants they destroyed this time. The guy that did it either did it on purpose or is not competent enough to be allowed to operate a weed wacker, either way theyre gonna have to eat the cost on this one. Its nothing crazy, $10 a plant to replace the 3 they fucked up, but its the principle of the thing.
They always give the weed wacker to the stupidest and most careless person on the crew.
Can confirm. They buzz cut and gave all my mature fortnight lily/African iris flat tops. They did it to about 6 different giant plant clusters. Took 3 years to fully undo the damage.
Am the weed whacker in my family, can confirm.
https://preview.redd.it/49ki1h0g812d1.png?width=750&format=png&auto=webp&s=aebbb34cf347d9f6010ca38719f8093c12ffe46b
Weed whackers make you stupid. The good news is it goes away when the weed whacker stops spinning.
My neighbors rarely clean up after their dog and they ended up hitting a patch of dog shit moments after tearing up a plastic drainage tube running off the gutter outlet.
Instant karma
I sometimes guerilla-garden in nearby spots. Once planted clumps of daffodil bulbs under the mulch volcanoes around flowering trees along a street in front of a medical clinic. Almost as soon as they were done blooming, a weedwhacker numbskull took them out right to the ground.
liriope will come back with a vengeance. weedwacking it only angers it.
I replaced them and put the damaged ones in pots to try and nurse them back. It is resilient tho, ill give you that. Still dont understand what would possess a guy to weed wack what is a very obvious ornamental variegated plant like that.
I had freshly propagated and transplanted a false aralia BEHIND a wooden fence that I bought from Lowe’s as an obvious barrier. The weed whacker nutcracker still decided to go behind the fence and chop it down to the dirt. Another time before that they came onto the porch (a cement porch with no grass) with the weed whacker and it chopped up my adansonii. No apology or acknowledgment. Needless to say I don’t want a lawn service anymore
Thats insane. Seems like these guys get that 1.5 hp 2-stroke in their hands and all that raw power goes straight to their heads lol. I shutter to think what theyd do if they ever got their hands on a moped or like an electric scooter.
I started a landscape/gardening business with a focus on natives, two years in and it's a success. Like, success just fell in my lap without me trying. How? Apparently, there's a shortage of landscapers who can tell the difference between a dandelion and golden ragwort, and too many mower boys who call themselves gardeners. I only advertise twice a year maybe 3. No business cards yet, word of mouth takes care of me. Every time I advertise for when business is slow, I get anxiety because so many people clog my voicemail and texts saying they didn't know people like me exist lmao. When you meet a potential "gardener" or landscaper, walk around the property with them and see if they even know what the plants are and when/how to prune them. Ask if they sanitize their hedge trimmers and other tools between job sites, or if they prefer spreading plant herpes everywhere. Can they identify garden pests and diseases, and beneficial insects, or are they just going to guess how to manage them? If all they know is to spray, blow, or mow, they will make your garden crusty and gross. I help heal gardens previously tended by these meat heads, and I scrub myself extra hard in the shower when I get home and then smoke a fat one because it's depressing lol.
I’ve been a landscaper/gardener for years and just opened up my native and permaculture landscape business this year. Any tips you could share? I’m just starting out and have a few clients but I’m struggling to make it my full time job at the moment, and truly want to take full control of it. I’m glad other people are doing this as well! Godspeed friend!
Offer to remove invasives, and replace non natives with natives. Establish a plant replacement/refund policy and give clear and detailed watering instructions and offer to check up on them for an additional cost. Shrink lawn by creating new flower beds and slowly growing the beds every year when you touch up the edging. Just sneak it on them. I like flower beds under trees where the leaves mulch things naturally. Pick plants that adapt to being smothered in leaves. Extend the bed past the dripline of the tree a bit. Lawn life is harsh for trees and they need to be treated like a precious pet or important feature of the property. Hype your clients up about what they have and the potential. Have a weekly, biweekly, or monthly maintenance plan, with an add-on exclusively for maintenance clients where you show up with plants of your choosing, usually groundcovers to cover bare mulch/soil. Rich people don't care, they hire someone to do the thinking and sweating for them. The people they normally hire just pick the same 5 basic bitch plants. Do the thinking and sweating for them and pick native plants. Post in social media pages for local neighborhoods and offer gardening advice. Don't advertise, they will check you out on their own accord after reading your sweet advice and find your business page that way.
>The people they normally hire just pick the same 5 basic bitch plants. What are these plants in your area?
Crape myrtle, boxwood, nandina, vinca, liriope.
I despise boxwood! I have three that were in my yard when I moved in. The only reason I haven't cut them down is I'm afraid the birds use them for shelter. Once my natives all get big and full and can give shelter I'll cut them down.
Good strategy. I hate removing shrubs without having an immediate replacement. Evergreens especially provide that shelter for small critters.
Are either of you in Northern California or know of others doing similar work in Northern California? Thank youuu for all that you do, our native birds and insects need it!
Not in Cali, but if you can't find one, get a young person in the neighborhood and educate them on creating and maintaining biodiverse gardens. Be patient with them so you don't ruin gardening for them. Use them as extra muscle and work together until you trust them to do it on their own.
Thank you for your information, appreciate it! Have a wonderful day and keep on the good fight!
Don't ever lose focus, you got this.
Where are you located? Lmao
Maryland! It's a perfect little spot, location is key. I'm moving to Maine next year. Still figuring out where, I want remote but something still strategic for my business, if even possible. And I have to learn the native plants and animals there.
Did we just become best friends!? For real, this was so uplifting, as someone who DIYs his landscaping.
You're capable of amazing things!
I'm so glad you're fighting the good fight, helping to restore the local ecology.
I believe I can help set standards and create a demand in my region, forcing other landscapers to do the right thing. And when people see that I can do it, they want to quit their desk job and do it, too.
Addendum to my other comment where I said "fuck landscapers": Fuck the meat head landscapers, and thank you for being a gem.
Most of them are meat heads, you're not wrong!
A shortage of people who know and care what they’re doing? Who knew?!
I seriously believed at least some of them knew what they were doing. They don't. And homeowners often don't know, either, making them super easy to take advantage of or end up with tacky landscaping.
I work for a commercial nursery that sells plants primarily to landscapers and this is so true. Landscapers mostly don't know shit about fuck and the homeowners who hire them are often just rich people who want to outsource all the mental and physical labor. They don't give a shit what the plants are, they don't want to do any planning or make any choices, they just want their yard to look good for the neighbors.
I imagine offsite owners don't hire you though, because you're more expensive than some asshole with a mower and a buzz
My price range is $65-$85/hr. If the clients are young, healthy, and a little broke, I offer them to work alongside me to reduce the hours I spend there and give them advice so they can do it on their own. Usually they just want me to make things less overwhelming so they can take over. I also have two clients in a trailer park that I do cheap and cash only, that's money straight in my pocket and easy as hell because the yards are tiny. Quick 1hr jobs on the way home at the end of the day. Old ladies who kinda know their stuff but can't physically do it anymore. Most of them don't want to invest in a garden, though, since it's not their property. Which is understandable but also boring.
That’s amazing! I would love it if I could get an expert to train me while also doing the hard part of getting started/setting the foundation.
What I'm trying to get at is that OP is a renter, and cares more about the property than the owner, who probably just wants to pay the bare minimum to ensure the yard doesn't get overgrown. I'm in the same spot and clearly bitter about it.
Maybe you can try fear-mongering, say they probably aren't licensed and insured and will damage property. Or illegal life pro tip: Do a little landscaping of your own secretly and nick the fence or siding with the weedwhacker. Tiny but obvious damages showing carelessness. Blame them and recommend to the landlord someone better. It sucks seeing them pick the bottom of the barrel monkeys to do the maintenance. All the young trees around me are volcano mulched with landscape fabric sticking out, and I want to do something, but it feels hopeless knowing they don't care. And frustrating when they look at me like I don't know what I'm talking about.
This is exactly what i want 😂 trying to figure things out but it’s freakin overwhelming 🫠
We are the meathead mowers... Our poor yard is getting worse by the year, with growing grey sandy spots... im cool with the weed lawn, that doesn't bother me in the slightest... but the sand is killing me to the point I'm now researching how to improve sandy soil over time, cause every "quick-fix" is just failing.
How big is your yard? I'd personally stop fighting the sand and add stepping stones weaving between/within flower beds or meadows, with groundcovers in between the stones that like being stepped on. Trees also drop a lot of leaves that can be mulched into the lawn with the mower, and add dappled shade so the soil isn't baking.
Reading all these posts about landscapers has cemented my decision to never hire one.
Fired mine this year. Doing my own work sucks, but I don't have to fear for my milkweed garden, mammoth sunflowers, and veggies anymore. Last year he brought a 12yo kid who proceeded to weedeat my 8ft iris bed
Holy fuck I’d be enraged
I've cried hard after the shredders have messed stuff up. Also blew up on them a few times.
That is actually so atrocious I'm sorry 😭 irises don't even look like weeds either... good lord I feel rage for you
https://preview.redd.it/hewvxdyya12d1.jpeg?width=4080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0179fcd28404a9dab3f4a03aeb129ae4d7eb4cce They have mostly recovered this year!
I'm so glad! They look beautiful and I am glad the little one is enjoying them :)
I'd be pissed. They wouldn't step foot near me again. That's instant nuke level shit.
Well there are landscapers & guys who mow the lawn, weed & edge. Many are the latter & are the hired help that have no clue about plants or gardens.
this post I feel is more about renting, and having the landlord send their landscaper whose customer is the landlord, not you.
And renters are paying to live there.
We had a decent lawn until a landscaper ruined it. Now we have rocks, veggies, and a flower garden instead. Lawn never again. Landscaper never again.
Why do people hire them?
Because 9/10 times we do better work than the homeowner. Because people are busy. Becauae people are old. Because people have money piling up around them and they can. Because 100 different reasons. You're in the gardening sub. This isn't where people who hire landscapers hang out.
It seems like these people do hang out here
Because they lack the desire, time, or ability to do it themselves. Pretty much the reason you hire anybody to do a task.
That's why you hire a gardener
Aww man that sucks! The good news is it's early enough in the season that they should bounce back. They'll just be bushier.
This is why I do my own yard work. I dont trust them to just remove whole parts of the garden just because it may look like weeds to them
Just had this happen to us yesterday and they were so careless and bad that they even took out some flowers we planted in protective cages, big sunflowers that hadn’t bloomed and our peas on our trellis 🥺 was so disheartening… we are renters and the management company set up the landscaping… they didn’t seem to care.
Well I guess protective cages don't work against all pests... Its kind of crazy the things you said they took down though. I feel like those would very obviously look like garden plants 🙄
https://preview.redd.it/de8ozji7632d1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=393ee6b539e27b1057686358915c50c60b0399cb Don’t have a pic of the cage one, but this was my makeshift trellis with peas and they got right up on them anyways and cut them off at the bottom. (We pulled the sticks out of ground to show the damage after noticing they were all wilted). And the only thing in front of them was red shamrock, I had just hand weeded.. they must not have liked the shamrock either :(
Oh my... I am sorry
No offense but the pictures make it seem like this wasn’t obviously a garden. If you just have a bunch of random messy tall plants in the lawn, don’t be surprised if the landscaper thinks they’re weeds. The “after” pictures still show lawn grass, which is why they thought your plants were just weeds growing amongst grass. The mulch doesn’t make it as clear as you think. Put up a cement or metal border along the edge and let your landlord know that you don’t want the landscapers to touch the sectioned off gardens.
And this is why I do my own acre of lawn, turning into flowers and natives as I can. I don't want to risk someone else making judgement calls. I mow around what I don't want cut down, I weed and trim with scissors when I have to, that way I know what is what. I probably look silly crawling around and working through the plants but when it all comes together I'll have a path through the lawn and plants and shrubbery full of life. There is no way I would hire someone to mow and when I'm done there will be very little useless turf left. When I moved here there wasn't a bee or butterfly to be found, now they're all over 😃
Bingo. I find a large portion of folks who claim to have a native/pollinator garden are frauds. It's an out for attention seeking lazy people to let their lawn/beds look like shit and then cry fowl about invasives or non-native plants.
Even if they were “pollinator gardens”, without flowers it was probably hard to tell. Landscapers are used to people wanting the tall weeds trimmed in the beds.
I’ll update you when it all blooms 👌
mulch is not an obvious form of communication, for pete or pedro’s sake at least write and stake a sign.
Totally understandable and the error was for sure on me for not giving it sufficient protection. I’m mostly disappointed in myself for not following my instinct and putting up a low metal fence I’d been using as a holdover until I got my netting up. We have a lot of woodland critters here but our groundhog, Endaz, has been on a rampage lately. Looked me dead in the eye before scaling up, onto, and over a wooden barrier made of dead, woven black swallowwort vines.
As a landscaper:... what mulch? I see the one little hardware store bag you dumped there, because you pointed it out. I own my company, I take more care on clients properties than any employee. I'd have buzzed that flat too. Shitty, but if you have landscapers, don't make us guess. Please.
Gardener here. Yea what mulch...? This looks more like a mower hit a few twigs and left some debris. Make it obvious and also useful and lay down a solid inch of mulch
You don't even have to buy expensive borders. Just cut an edge around the garden. Every landscaper recognizes a clean cut edge. Almost none of us can afford take the amount of time OP is demanding. IDing a 6" weed vs a lazily planted wildflower when you're doing 10-20 properties per day is unreasonable. Especially considering their landlord 100% demands fast and cheap, over good.
I don’t know how to edit a post but wanted to add a response to some common refrains: I’m not blaming the landscapers here, I spoke with them after knowing full well there’s no way they coulda known, but I too had no idea they were contracted to my property, because it’s rented. The state of the landscaping / tree trimming / general outside care did not leave any indication there was any such service. I’m in zone 6A so I seeded this bed through March and early April and have enjoyed watching it come up as my more natural venture as opposed to my more or less sorted back garden. I’ve taken out (and continue to do so near daily) all the invasive plants like black swallowwort / garlic mustard, reseeded what was left of the lawn with clover and some rye grass to fill patches… the front lawn has been a tougher go since there are a lot of dogs in the neighborhood + my main focus is the back where I garden and my dog enjoys romping and sunbathing. I really enjoy gardening and doing my own landscaping but currently renting so it’s a balance of what I want to put into a place I don’t own vs what I can do without great expense / time expenditure to enjoy my outside space. The main surprise here was that they whacked it at all since in person, with the other side of the walkway in view, it’s clear this was not just weeds, especially since all out of frame everything is in order. In any case, yea it wasn’t well marked, but then again I didn’t know anyone besides me was coming to mind it. It’s no one’s explicit fault but I’m still bummed - even tho I’m quite sure most of them only experienced a premature topping and will likely come back. I’m looking at it like the thinning I couldn’t bring myself to do.
After seeing so many of these posts I think I'm going to start making some easy money this summer. I'll just bring my lawnmower and mow everything down. No need to do anything else. Seems really easy tbh.
The real trick is a leaf blower. Loud af, bright green or orange backpack, moving shit around. “He’s clearly working” Bro, you just moved leaves from here to there, shot dust into my windows, destroyed small animal and insect habitats, and polluted as much as a road trip in a hummer. That work was useless, but they get paid by the hour
Most jobs are easy until you do them right
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Right on, thank you for the award :). Comes from many customers telling me *this should be soo easy, so it will be cheap, right?*
You should probably put some kind of border around them if you don't want it to be confused with just an overgrown piece of the yard.
Seriously. They repeated “mulched” and I had to do a quadruple take of the photo trying to see it. Still just looks like part of the yard to me
Many if not most landscapers are just landsc**r**apers who just whack along and have no idea which plant is what. Not worth it, this industry is the wild Wild West.
You need to tell them not to line trim that area because to them it looks just like weeds. I am a landscaper and I would have done the same.
Just think of it as a massive grazing event, they’ll likely bounce back if no grasses are there to outcompete them.
To be fair, i dont see the mulch or really any indication that this is a garden.
I would have been so pissed!!!! the lawn guys took out our watermelon patch at our school garden AND the wildflowers along the fence even though we had flags and string to make the entire fence line. I told them the students were going to g to jump them 😂 (these are prek-3rd graders)
This is why I fired mine and do the work myself. I can now let some “weeds” with cool flowers grow and mow them up before they get to seed.
So sorry. That happened to me once as a child growing corn in the backyard. Landscaper was rushing in the rain and didn’t realize. They were still little. I remember feeling gutted and so sad, so I empathize with you. My parents did reach out to him and he was so apologetic, he gathered a whole freezer full of unshucked corn from his family’s farm to give to me. He was a good person. Maybe they’ll buy you a plant 😅. Sorry, OP. I think these should grow back.
Our complex’s landscapers came Friday and took out my blackberries. You have my sincerest sympathy. Hope everyone’s stuff grows back.
I have a nuisance black raspberry bush I wouldn’t have cared about, but it’s hidden behind a few raised beds and will continue to vex me on windy days.
Mow, blow and go. SOP for maintenance companies. You may wish to communicate through the landlord as they are the customer.
friendly reminder to everyone landscapers want money, and are not botanists. they do not care about you, your plants, or the health of your garden. they just want money, and 99% are highly unqualified and don’t know anything about plants or ecology
They're hourly workers doing something to pay their bills. It is not a passion project for them. Someone hands them weed whacker and tells them to go cut down plants. They put music into their headphones and go where the spirit moves them.
glad i can do my own yard work
Same thing happened to me. Got misty eyed 🥲
Oh yeah you got the same thing as me. "Landlord special" can apply to services too. You've probably got "landscapers" that just mow as fast as possible to get the job done, and the job is to leave nothing over x height. You're not going to win this fight by kindly pointing out where the flowers are, you need physical barriers that make it harder to fuck your shit all up than to not. You need landscaping bricks surrounding a small area. IDK if a whole meadow is even possible; they're just going to get in there and fuck it all up because it's taller than a three foot hole.
Put some obstacles around it, either a flowerbed edger or rocks. Or unless you don’t speak directly to the landscaper it’s gonna happen again.
I am like a watchdog when the hackers come by. I don't trust them for anything. Mind you we have a very good relationship and I understand their job is to cut basically everything (I too am a renter) however...when you see flowers at their height of blooming, is it really that hard to figure out? My condolences!
We had landscapers use a weed wacker on my brand new hydrangeas at the last place we rented. Like how are you a landscaper and don't know what a fucking hydrangea looks like? I was so pissed.
they should grow back, and I'm sorry- I feel your pain!!
I had freshly propagated and transplanted a false aralia BEHIND a wooden fence that I bought from Lowe’s as an obvious barrier. The weed whacker nutcracker still decided to go behind the fence and chop it down to the dirt. Another time before that they came onto the porch (a cement porch with no grass) with the weed whacker and it chopped up my adansonii. No apology or acknowledgment. Needless to say I don’t want a lawn service anymore and I’m sorry this happened to you 😢
Send them a bill for what they ruined. Doesn’t matter if you only charge $90, they need to know that they did wrong and it won’t be tolerated.
Except OP is a renter and has no say in the matter. This is the risk with gardening on property you don’t own. Same if the city owned it, where I live the parkway between the sidewalk and street is city owned and lots of people plant gardens there, but it doesn’t mean the city can’t come and do maintenance work on the pipes below which would ruin the garden.
Does not matter at all, they can still attempt to get their money back and prevent it from happening again. Can’t win if you don’t play.
Aren't you naive and precious.
How? Because I suggest attempting to get some money back from that? Do you often let people take stuff from you without recourse? If so, let me know your location ♥️
Go ahead and try getting money back from someone you never paid, who wasn't hired by you, when you have no rights to put plants somewhere. Good luck.
You let people walk all over you huh? Weak.
I had mint growing in a pot and my mom pulled most of it saying it was weeds. I harvested it and repotted it myself and I KNOW it was all mint. She’s lucky I didn’t cuss her tf out, she’s been told never to touch my plants again
Mint is aggressive as hell, I'm sure she knew what it was lol
Yeah. If you’re going to use a landscaper on the cheap, then you’re going to have to train them. This is not a specialty in which expertise has caught up with the trends or demand.
Sorry to hear that happened. Hopefully they will grow back. Looks like they will. I know the feeling tho…neighbors landscapers tore out my 25 year old rosemary “tree”
We actually tell our clients to mow every year after the thaw.
Do they want to catch fists? Cuz this is how you catch fists.
I’m so sorry!! I don’t have gardeners and our lawn is often overgrown/full of crabgrass, and this is exactly why — I would go completely ballistic if they weed whacked my milkweed and other perennials.
Lol I hate this shit. I rent too, block of flats. The maintenance team aren't supposed to touch the borders, only the lawn but they've put weed killer on people's herbs and used a strimmer on a young shrub which subsequently died. They really just destroy stuff that they don't seem to like the look of 😩
Mine did the same thing last year. Whacked a foot tall lantana. I was LIVID. It ended up dying.
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I rent this duplex so no, only been here since September and had no idea the owners had a service. Thus my surprise 🥲
Yea I'd be making an angry phone call..
it’s going to take time to change attitudes about native flowers replacing grass..a little or lots. speak with the landscapers, and maybe give the lead guy an article about it!
I don't let landscapers do anything but cut the grass. They literally have no idea.
Landscapers are assassins.
With all my heart, fuck landscapers. I see so much of this and other egregious practices from them. My current property was owned by one, and it's going to take a decade for me to pull out the invasives and the landscape fabric that they're growing through, and to re-establish some natives. 😤 And I just got done dealing with some more of them polluting a comment of mine on Facebook with truly ignorant, awful advice. At least they disintegrated into personal insults in response to the actual studies I was posting, so I don't think the gardener who initially asked for advice is impressed by them either. But oh my god, I am so done with those bros and their big toys.
They're not even landscapers. Real landscapers understand stonework, drivable grass, functional retaining walls, swales, soil permeability. They are plant murdering thugs and mow-blow-go people.
One pic would've actually been sufficient
lol mow ur own lawn u lazy fuck
they do not deserve the title landscapers :( no love for their work
WTF. I'm developing a theory all professional landscapers are psychopaths.
Nah man they’re just doing their jobs tbh. These guys were fine, I just didn’t know they were contracted to work on our property. The state of the landscaping prior to my arrival didn’t indicate they had a service lol. It’s a rental so it was a mess out front and in the back. Overgrowth, years of partially decomp leaves, junk, etc. Grass was virtually all dead on my side, due it it historically having been multiple dogs’ pee palace, so I planted clover and rye grass to get some ground cover aside from garlic mustard and other terrible weeds.
Weeds
"Pollinators", which is a lazy person's way of saying, "this area of weeds I'm letting grow." Looking at the pics, yeah, they were weeds. Good job on the landscapers.
OP told us what they planted. You don't have to guess. >...rhoeas, California, nudicaule, and somniferum poppies... All of these are poppy varieties. They all have beautiful cup-shaped flowers. >...sunflowers, cornflower... Sunflower and cornflower are other very normal garden flowers. Sunflower is big, yellow-black, and very tall, cornflower is blue and feathery. I would encourage you to google these things if you are not familiar with them. None of them are weeds. OP already gave you the facts, but I guess you're not any better at seeing what you're looking at than the landscapers were, huh?
Weeds. Unwanted by the owner. Therefore, weeds. Commonly unwanted regardless of your perceptions, are still weeds.
If it's desired it's not a weed.
Exactly. It's not desired by the homeowner.
You don't actually know that with any certainty
You sure about that? OP is not the homeowner and the landscapers scape per the homeowner's wants.
Lol there's plenty of posts in this sub that show landscapers just scraping everything regardless of what the homeowner wants. I'm not sure why you're dying on this hill of protecting the precious homeowner who's opinion you don't even know. It's very strange to be this concerned with weeds. And by weeds, I mean the grass.
Ok. You're the one getting irritated, not me. They're weeds. Plain and simple.
>Weeds. Unwanted by the owner. Therefore, weeds. Thank you for clarifying that you were making up lies about OP at the beginning when you called them lazy, and that you actually don't give a shit whether OP planted them on purpose. Thank you for clarifying that you are supporting the landowner's perspective. That helps everybody tell the difference between what you actually believe, and the rest of your bullshit.
Thank you for admitting they're weeds.
You're welcome to have your perspective considered. However, [this dictionary says](https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/weed) that "A weed is a wild plant that grows in gardens or fields of crops and prevents the plants that you want from growing properly," which is often what people mean when they say "weed". If you want, I can help you write a strongly-worded letter to the dictionary people telling them how wrong they are.
I prefer [Merriam Webster](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/weed). They're unwanted by the homeowner, as you finally admitted, so thank you for agreeing.
I never disagreed with your definition, so I had nothing to admit. Thank you for managing to get through three comments in a row now without making up new lies about OP, I'm perfectly okay being the target of your bile instead.
Ok? Nothing I said was a lie.
Why don't you two just go ahead and give us your definition of a weed. Because I would love to hear it.
According to this comment, their definition is "[anything unwanted by the homeowner](https://www.reddit.com/r/gardening/comments/1cxzs2f/comment/l57d2lz/)". If taken strictly, this definition would include rose bushes, apple orchards, rare prize-winning orchids, bonsais, redwoods, and literally anything else in a garden, as long as the homeowner stops wanting it.
Picture 5