Harder & Warner Landscapes and Boutique Gardens — Local services in Caledonia Charter Township

Man, what a trip. Pleasant enough people, just a very poor experience.

We bought three trees from here back in April or March with delivery-to-hole service for the biggest one; two 1.5x1.5ft root ball smaller trees and one 3x3ft root ball larger tree that we definitely couldn’t move ourselves. Got our delivery date and dug the holes for our trees, had part of the fence temporarily take down for delivery to the backyard.

Delivery time came and went and the two smaller trees were dropped off, but not the larger one. The delivery guys were clearly in a hurry, so we let them do their thing and called Harner & Warner. The person who answered was super brusque and almost rude, which was surprisingly because throughout all this, their staff has been pleasant. The brusque person couldn’t help, but the manager who called us back right after confirmed that our bigger tree had accidentally been forgotten and we’d get a call back about delivery.

The rest of the day came and went, then the weekend, then Monday. No call back. Monday late or Tuesday afternoon, my husband called a couple times and eventually spoke to a nice manager who confirmed that the tree would be delivered soon and assured us that they’d call ahead so we’d be ready - having dogs, the fence had to be put back up and it’s a heavy fence that requires paying someone to come out and take it apart, so we needed time to be ready.

Well, they did not call ahead and that’s where everything went downhill. They arrived without calling while I was mid-workday and my husband was occupied. Obviously, the forklift couldn’t fit through our narrow fence and we hadn’t had time to pay someone to open a gap because they forgot to call us in advance. The guys were nice, dropped the tree as close to the gate as they could get it and were very careful not to tear up our lawn. Harner & Warner kindly refunded us the difference in charge between delivery to hole and plain delivery, which we appreciated.

A square foot of sod averages 15-30 pounds in weight and the root ball on our tree was probably around 25 square feet, meaning that my husband and I weren’t able to move it on our own as we’d hoped. After hours of trying different things, we gave up and called my mother in law for ideas because she always knows what to do. I should explain that my mother in law has done a lot of business with Harner & Warner and specially recommended them to us, as she has to many of her friends.

On hearing that Harner & Warner had missed their delivery time and hadn’t given us notice to be ready, she called them and gave them a piece of her mind - not loudly or rudely, but very directly. This is something every associate made very clear in every bit of communication with us after this point and something I feel was probably taken personally, based on what happened after this.

After some back and forth, it was decided that we’d pay for another delivery-to-hole service and we’d dig a new hole in the front yard instead. We paid over the phone immediately ($90c not bad), dug the hole and waited.

Today, they call my mother-in-law (not us) and tell her that the tree will delivered today, except we haven’t paid for the service. She pays for it over the phone and informed us - since we had the charge on our credit card for second delivery-to-hole, we called back to ask what was up.

Y’all… this is where I finally got upset. The manager did her level best to convince my husband that we hadn’t paid, while we were looking at the charge, going so far as to play the “your mom called us” card and asking if “maybe it was for one of the several times [they’ve] had to move the tree for us.” Since they hadn’t moved the tree for us yet and all the problems to date were caused by failures on this side, this genuinely still makes me angry.

The tree was finally planted today. Our front yard is ruined. The forklift took a couple hard turns and really destroyed the grass, something we know they’re capable of not doing from our first interaction. Just frustrating. All we wanted was what...

Frankly I am surprised by the positive reviews. I unfortunately did not have a good experience with Harder & Warner. I spent over $3000 dollars to have my backyard designed and landscaped in May of 2017. It is now 2 years since installed and I have pretty much had to replace almost half of the plants that HW planted.

I did not know that I could go in and purchase the plants ahead of time so unfortunately the installer brought very small plants without any blooms and some of them did not look very healthy. When I questioned this she told me they can't bring the blooming ones as those are for the nursery shoppers.

I paid to have HW install at $75 an hour to ensure I got the 1 year warranty. Last year I sent several e-mails about replacing the plants that died and how disappointed I was with the plants as many were not thriving due to lack of sunlight or too much sun. For example Little Lime bushes which like sun were planted in an area with very little sunlight. All three have never bloomed and are very small. While Endless Summer hydrangeas were planted in the almost full sun area of the garden.

When I finally got to speak to someone and expressed my concerns I was told they would replace the dead ones but were not going to replace or move the plants that were not thriving due to location even though the landscape was designed and planted by them. The reason I spent $3K was to ensure it was designed with proper sunlight placement and a warranty. Bottom line is I could have done what they did for 1/3 of the price on my own with larger blooming plants.

Update: Response to owners reply. As stated previously although several plants died the bigger issue to me was that H&W was not replacing plants that did not thrive (as noted in pictures) due to lack of sunlight/incorrect placement. The designer initially came out in early spring of 2017 before the trees had bloomed so perhaps he did not realize how much shade there was. As far as standing behind the design that was designed, I asked for someone to come out several times to see what my concern was but every time it was scheduled no one came, so not sure how you can stand beside a design that was never seen in person. After sending several e-mails over a two year span I got fed up and have been moving and replacing on my own. the plants that I moved are doing much better in the new locations with...

On Saturday 6/6 we encountered very poor customer service at Harder and Warner (HW).

We called ahead to find out if they had a specific tree and price of that tree because it would be an hour trip for us. Arie answered the phone and was very nice. She said the tree we wanted was in stock and was around $150. So we drove the hour trip. And it was our very first visit to HW.

While there we looked around for gravel, perennials and landscape decor. After choosing those purchases, we went up to the front desk to find a person to help locate the tree...the main reason we went to HW.

Paul came out. Not sure if he was a manager because while walking to find the tree, instead of answering our questions he was constantly talking to other employees on his walkie talkie about other customers rather then dealing with the one in front of him.

We finally found the tree and when we confirmed the price with him he said it was $279. We told him when we called, Arie said it would be around $150. Paul had a "could care less" attitude. He said "oh well that's the price".

No attempt to apologize or show empathy for incorrect info or our wasted trip or time!

We see TV advertisements about Harder/Warner but maybe they should spend their money on customer service training that would turn a disappointed customer into a customer that would have spent upwards of $1000 on that day and more in the future.

Or maybe they don't really care because they have plenty of business and prefer to get a negative review!

We just left the products we already picked to purchase and went to another nursery the same day and spent our money there instead.

Harder and Warner can thank Paul for losing this customer and...