Brad Brown Lawn & Landscape

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I contacted Brad Brown Lawn and Landscaping of Shelbyville, KY about laying sod in a roughly 400 square foot bare place in my backyard. In our initial conversation, Brad asked me to send him pictures of the area that needed the sod, which I did. Nearly 2 hours later, I still didn’t know whether he had received my text or not, or if he even wanted my business, because he didn’t acknowledge the text that he had requested. For all I knew, the message didn’t get to him because of the size or number of pictures. I wrote him a follow-up message, asking if he had received the previous text, and that, too, went unanswered. I wrote him again the next day, and finally received an answer. How difficult was that to do? I wrote him again to ask when his crew would be coming to my house to lay the sod, and again, silence. Did he want my business or not?? I wrote him again with no response, and then wrote again that afternoon to ask if he was interested in the job or not. Finally, he responded. I understand that he may be busy, but so am I, and how long does it take to fire off a quick text in response to a prospective customer? This should have tipped me off to a problem with this company, but I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. Big mistake. I should have found somebody else. In preparation for having the sod laid, I had already prepared the soil as much as I knew to. Weeds and debris were removed, low places filled in, surface raked smooth, etc. The workers arrived on schedule, but the quality of the work was poor, and it appears that they did as little as they could get away with. When the sod was laid, the ends overlapped the plastic edging of an adjoining flowerbed and in many other areas, the ends overlapped the existing grass by an inch or more. In those places, the raw edges of the sod were exposed and the roots had no soil contact, and they would have dried out. In some places, even if the sod had been placed at the edge of the bare soil, the raw edge of the sod was exposed to the air. Part of this is because when I prepared the soil, I had not allowed enough room at the edges for the thickness of the new sod, but how was I to know how much was enough and how much was too much? When I did the work, the space I allowed seemed sufficient. Since it wasn’t, the raw edges of the new sod were exposed. I would think that the workers would take care of something like this before laying the sod if I had not allowed enough room. How hard would that have been? I complained to Brad about the edges of the new sod being exposed, and he talked as if it was my fault. He said that they don’t do “prep work”, whatever that it is. Seriously? I was the customer, and he was supposedly the knowledgeable professional who was being hired to lay the sod, and lay it properly, not just roll it out and leave it regardless of how it looked or whether it would die back. He said that he had told me previously that they didn’t do prep work, but he had said no such thing, even though he had plenty of opportunities. Even if he had, what exactly is “prep work”, anyway, in this context? When we talked about it, all I got was defensiveness and excuses. When I pointed out to his workers that the sod was overlapping the existing lawn and the new sod, one of them talked like it was perfectly acceptable, and gave me some song and dance about how the two would just blend together. According to him, the grass below would grow up through the new sod and the two would just seamlessly blend together. Right. I hate being talked to as if I’m stupid. At my request, the workers trimmed the edges of the sod that were overlapping the flowerbed edging and the other sod, then they left. I took a trowel and did the “prep work” that Brad’s company couldn’t be bothered to do, and did it in about 15 minutes. As I looked more closely at the overall job, though, I noticed that not only had the sections of new sod overlapped other sections in places, but there were many gaps between sections at the ends and the sides, exposing the edges. Even instructions to DIY installers say that ends and edges should be pressed tightly against each other, but that obviously was not done. Left alone, this would have allowed those edges of the sod to dry out and die. I have laid sod before, and when done right you can barely tell where one section ends and the next one begins. It would have taken only a couple of extra minutes ensure that the job was done right. When I was speaking with Brad that last time, he said something very telling. I don’t recall his exact words, but the gist of it was that the only reason he accepts the small jobs is to keep his name in front of the sod suppliers so that he gets the big jobs. If I had known in advance that hiring Brad Brown Lawn and Landscaping meant that I was going to get results like this, I never would have hired them in the first place. Buyer beware.