Northern Rock Landscape & Design

Horrible company - if you're looking for landscapers, look elsewhere for a more professional company to work with. I hired Northern Rock, lead by Zachary, back in Aug 2012 after receiving their flyer in my mail. Little did I know, their contract and integrity wasn't worth the paper their flyer was printed on. I paid Zachary and his team to lay down a parking pad in the front yard so that we can park our second car, and also to reface the front porch and add armour stone steps to complete "the look". While Zachary was polite and nice to work with at the beginning, the job was botched right from the beginning. The stones were poorly aligned and terribly crooked, I had to take pictures and draw diagrams to point out how crooked the stones were! Zachary took the feedback well, and he fixed and realigned the stones and eventually completed the job. When it was eventually done, they didn't bother to fill all the gaps between the stones (we had to do that ourselves), a stone was left unglued to the front porch (which they eventually came back to glue, and left a messy dollop all over my step!) and some stones are unevenly laid on the porch so chairs often get caught or snagged when they're pushed from one place to another. Despite all of this, I was still OK with the job because I just wanted it done and over with. By the time the snows started to thaw (Feb/Mar 2013) I noticed that the stones were beginning to sink into the ground and I could see the car wheel grooves. The parking pad was only 6 mths old but it already looked old and tired, and the grooves from the weight of the car were very apparent and ugly! It looks awful and amateurish. I immediately contacted Nothern Rock by email, and at the beginning we exchanged very cordial messages and Zachary replied every day. He said he would come by and fix it as per our contract/warranty. To make a long story short, he stood me up on 3 occasions, each one with no notice whatsoever - he just didn't show up and didn't call. When I emailed him, he'd give me excuse after excuse (among them, the flu, the rain, the weather, etc.) and after more than 6 months of waiting, he is no longer answering my emails and has made no effort to come back and fix the stones. They are now concave, cracked, sinking into the ground and terribly uneven. It not only looks terribly amateurish, but the whole experience of working with someone I found from a flyer has left a terrible taste in my mouth, and I will never answer a flyer thrown in my mail again. There's a reason they call it junk mail. Leave it to the more seasoned professionals, these guys are very amateurish and they will not live up to their warranty agreements if you run into problems.

In April of this year I hired Northern Rock Landscape and Design to do some basic landscaping for me. This included bringing in a number of rocks, topsoil some planting removing a number of paving stones and cutting others to have a curved look. The owner and one helper showed up on time spent 3 days and then declared they were finished and asked for payment in full which my wife provided not realizing the job was not finished. As it turned out most of the rubbish and debris was dumped directly across the road from me, none of the paving stones were removed, the stones were not cut and we did not get the number of rocks agreed upon. Since that time I have left over 100 voice messages for the company with not one returned although 15 times they have promised in e-mails to remove the paving stones. Finally after 4 months I had the work completed by somebody else. The company never addressed the issue of the scenic stones that we were shortchanged on, curving the stones I was told long after the fact wouldn't look right so they just didn't do it (although I certainly paid for this) and the paving stones I had to take care of myself. What is particularly annoying is the fact that I did not haggle over the price and paid very promptly. Since that time I have run across several of Northern Rock's customers and they all share the same experience. Work not completed, phone calls not returned and VERY poor workmanship. I would never in a million years recommend this company to anybody. Currently I am in the process of suing to get some of my money back.