Kirkwood Home & Landscape + Julie's Garden Design in Kirkwood

My experience was incredible. Julie and Bob listened to what we wanted, made great suggestions and our project completely exceeded our expectations. We are in love with our front yard, new porch and back entertainment area. It was worth every penny to come home to a yard that blows me away. Working with Julie and Bob and ALL their staff was a great experience. Our project was prioritized and on time. Can't say enough good things.

Jeff Kirsch and team truly made my bathroom renovation a pleasant and enjoyable experience! Always on time, polite, clean, and conscientious - they even helped me save money when possible without cutting corners on quality. Highly recommend them and LOVE my new bathroom!

I used Kirkwood Home and Landscaping to build a small retaining wall and garden bed. I selected them to do the project because they could build the wall and also modify the irrigation system to irrigate the garden. We travel and keeping potted plants healthy during our absence has been problematic. I had a design in mind when I was requesting bids. Bob made a design change that was much better than mine. The crew were polite and professional and the quality of the work was very good. That being said; to avoid any misunderstandings, I advise AGAINST using a "Time and Material" agreement for any project.

I try to give people and companies the benefit of the doubt as well as get no enjoyment from providing negative feedback, but I feel as though I would be doing a disservice to all of those homeowners looking for a respectable company to come in and perform the necessary services. While the gentlemen that worked on my house were extremely nice and did a decent job, I will say that working with this company, overall, was not a smooth process. I'm extremely disappointed in the lack of communication, planning and project management with the entire company. Even though I overlooked a small disclosure in the contract about my project being a time/materials only project, meaning my project was going to be billed by the hour so would more than likely change from the implied "final price" estimate that was communicated to me, I was never kept in the loop on where the project stood throughout the 3 days the workers were here. The fact that the project was over-budget is something I was able to get over, but the lack of professional courtesy of managing the project each step of the way and communicating to me on a regular basis is what bothers me the most. This company thought it was ok to drop a bomb on me, at the end of the project, that the project ran 50% over budget and that they would work with me on giving a discount which was minimal. If they respond to this review they will solely focus on how a door we purchased from HD was not constructed properly which is what drove this project to be over-budget. I can't disagree with the Steve & Son's fiberglass exterior door not being constructed perfectly, but at the end of the day it shouldn't take 2 guys 6+ hours to figure that out. Either return it or deconstruct to figure out the problem. I had to go out of my way to figure out what the hold up was, figure out what our options were and then instruct them on which solution to take so that the work could go on seeing as though a huge snow storm was coming in and my preference would be to not have a huge void in my house with plastic liner being the only barrier. I was also told that it took extra time to install interior doors seeing as though our 100-year old house was not plumb or level. Of course it's not. Welcome to Kirkwood! I specifically called that out when Tim did the initial bid and he was also the project manager. For a company that is based in Kirkwood and the owner lives in the area, from what I was told, you would think this would be a no-brainer and that this company would have plenty of experience with working on older homes to the point where they aren't giving excuses about my house being the issue for all of their project miscalcs. Truly disappointed in this company, and hope they can learn from all of the unfortunate events of this experience to the point where future clients don't suffer what I had to go through.

Have been a client for over 20 years, which speaks for itself. Always creative, helpful and thoughtful in meeting our requests and needs. Very efficient and thorough - great!

We had a real problem with water in our backyard . We had lost 9 trees due to new water run off. Bob and his team put in 3 drywells. It has solved our problem. We now dried out and awaiting Julie and her team to add 7 new trees :)

We hired Julie to redesign our front flower beds and add plants in our backyard patio area. We found Julie and staff to be professional and prompt in our requests. Julie did a beautiful design and we love our new front flower beds, and the plantings they did in the backyard. We also hired them to put in a stone path and new beds in the backyard, and this project was completed nicely as well.

I’ve never written a review like this, and have included all of the positive aspects of my experience with Kirkwood Home & Landscape. That said, please use caution in hiring them for your next project. We certainly won't. Kirkwood Home & Landscape came recommended by several neighbors in our area (specifically on NextDoor), and we decided to use them for a major backyard project at our home. This included leveling our yard, removing all grass/sod, re-sodding the entire yard, and re-routing a gutter + sump pump pipe that emptied in the middle of our yard. The original crew was on time, friendly, and courteous. We thought we had a good thing going, and were fine with our $5,000+ investment for all of the work. Within a few days, however, we realized the work was not done properly. We had two days of rain, and our yard was positively flooded – worse than before we had it ‘leveled’ by Kirkwood Home & Garden. We were holding water in portions of the yard that were previously fine. Soon, the sod in the middle of the yard died, despite us following all of the care and maintenance instructions left by the crew. A few months later, our neighbor behind us reported flooding in his yard. The crew had re-routed our gutter/sump pump drain into a common area, but failed to provide the appropriate grading / drainage solution, so the water was now flowing our neighbor’s yard. We asked Kirkwood Home & Landscape if this would happen before they did the work, and they assured us it would be fine and the water would dissipate. We contacted Kirkwood Home & Garden several times. We felt we deserved more than this for $5,000. Their initial solution was to seed the yard. We agreed as a first (low cost, low effort) attempt to make things right. When the seed failed to take (because the yard was still flooding / holding water), we contacted them again. The receptionist was fantastic – she heard my concerns, empathized with my frustration, and seemed to genuinely care. I cried on the phone because of how much we stood to lose financially on this project; we have a young son who was being eaten by mosquitoes in our water-filled yard. She was sympathetic and kind. She was the most positive part of this experience, and we thanked her repeatedly for her kindness. But the owner, Bob Mosby, did not return my call or provide the receptionist with any direction for weeks. Finally, we contacted them again and they re-surveyed the yard. Apparently, the crew installed the drainage solution against code – they never should have routed it to the area of the yard that they did. So not only was our yard worse off than when we started, but now we were at risk of fines from the City of Des Peres. Bob Mosby said they would fix the drain location, but nothing else. He said they could not guarantee their work and ‘we had a lot of rain’ and our yard ‘was just a fishbowl’ that would naturally fill with water. So why did they take our $5,000 and agree to fix a ‘fishbowl’ with no chance of being fixed? He made sure to make the point multiple times that he was fixing the drain at no cost to us, and he was ‘losing money on the project,’ as if his crew’s out-of-code work was our fault. He was extremely condescending and patronizing to me and was very dismissive of our concerns. This drain saga took months to remedy. And our yard is still a pond when it rains even the slightest. We would strongly urge anyone considering using this company to 1) Not. But if you do, get in writing what happens if your sod / plants do not take or their work is sub-par. Also, make sure you and their crew are aware of codes in your area. We expected them (as the professionals) to know this, and clearly they did not or just didn’t care. (First Photo is the 'before' shot taken in March 2018; second photo is 'after' taken in April 2019.)