I've had a lot of work done on my property, and I can say that in comparison, this team of three young men is in a different league of quality, skill and hard work. They removed truckloads of weeds, vines and brush, installed ground cover, a rain garden, plantings around a 'zen' garden, and a cottage garden. They are heartfelt in their dedication to indigenous plants, and at the same time they listened carefully to my concerns and adapted immediately. Especially in contrast to the know-it-all mansplaining I often experience, these guys were eager for my participation, and even thanked *me* for explaining what I wanted in the way of landscape design (that said, they know tons about plant placement, but not so much about the structural elements for perspective and shape in a landscape). While I can't say much about Chris the owner one way or another, I enjoyed every moment of the work team's presence on my property and highly recommend them to anyone interested in natural planting.
I had a great experience working with Chris, Joey, Ben, and David. Everyone is extremely knowledgeable about native plants and they created a beautiful plan for our house. Joey was very responsive to suggestions and questions and was an excellent communicator.
We were looking to add more native plants to our beds and new bushes/trees to our lawn. They did a great job of putting in the plants and labelling them so we know what has been placed! We're looking forward to watching these plants grow and create a small nature haven in our neighborhood.
I moved into my property in Saline last summer. Chris and Joey and their crew helped me remove invasive shrubs and replant with natives. The plants are already filling in and look great. I definitely recommend them and look forward to working with them in the future!
My wife and I could not be happier with Creating Sustainable Landscapes and New Leaf Native Plant Nursery. From the initial consultation and landscape design through the installation everyone has been professional and have communicated in a very timely manner. The installation crew members were amazing. It was wonderful to watch the care with which they decided on the groupings and final layout of the plants. If anyone is interested in a native planting of Michigan native plants contact these guys.
They - and now my city backyard - are amazing! From being wonderful to work with to select plants and design to the best installation experience, I was happy from start to finish. It's so nice to work with a business that cares a lot about both the integrity of their work and customer joy. The guys on the ground were nice and so respectful of the property. They even spotted trillium I forgot to point out and took care not to harm them. Fully recommend!
I would not recommend unless they’re executing work you planned OR if you’re looking to hire a company for recurring maintenance (I wanted to do maintenance myself). I hired them to help establish a front yard prairie, which I wanted to get started but didn’t have the time to plan. CSL has created lots of unnecessary work by doing insufficient site prep and not giving advice when they should have. That’s not great considering I hired them for their expertise.
Regarding planning: They did two non-selective post-emergent herbicide sprays in springtime. Knowing what I know now, they should’ve at least asked me about the quality of lawn they were killing before choosing this approach. Fast growing crabgrass was ready to take over after the competition was gone. This caused an absolute jungle of crabgrass that prevented germination of native grasses throughout nearly half of the site. I spent many hours last year dealing with this and have learned to apply my own pre-emergent selective herbicide (Plateau) to hopefully address it this season.
What was especially frustrating about this was that, on the day of planting, there were large patches of crabgrass throughout the area they sprayed. I thought about asking if it was a concern but figured they were the experts and would tell me if it was likely to be an issue. They didn’t.
Some other things they should’ve advised differently on:
- They asked if I wanted to leave grass paths through the prairie or kill the grass and add mulch paths. I wanted the grass to walk on, but had they noted this risks things like rhizomous quackgrass spreading from the path into the prairie, I’d have been all for mulch.
- I was concerned about one plant in particular being predated by deer and rabbits so wanted to replace it with another. They assured me it was deer and rabbit resistant, but what do you know - for the first weeks of prairie establishment, I was re-inserting tens of plugs every morning, and that plant was the number one victim. Buckets of deer scram helped a bit with this, but I had to figure it out on my own.
- Surrounding the prairie, there are some mulched beds they planted with native plugs. I asked how much mulch they used (for next time), and they assured me they would fill in before I need to re mulch. After one season, the weed situation in those beds is already not great and I wish they had advised against beds altogether.
- They used a lot of plugs in my yard, and most of the plugs of tall grasses they put in came with weed grasses that aren’t present in the rest of the prairie - foxtails and another one I forget. Other plugs I bought from their nursery came with prostrate knotweed (a normal annoying weed, not the scary similarly named one), so it’s clear they’ve had some weed issues with their plugs.
It may have worked out fine had I decided to pay them $215 a time for maintenance, but the amount of things that didn’t go great was a bad sales pitch for the maintenance plan. Since maintenance is part of the business, I don’t think there’s an incentive for them to carefully plan at the beginning, even though some customers may want this. For me, rushing planning and site prep is a waste of time and money and I wish I’d been advised to do things differently.
I’ve learned a lot about how to work with nature through this experience, but not from CSL, and there are way more enjoyable ways of learning this stuff. I’ve given two stars instead of one because they did the work they said they would. Hopefully CSL can take this as a reminder to set expectations and give more advice to customers on what is most likely to succeed. Not everything can be predicted, but a little more effort in planning could’ve gone a long way.
I've been working with the team at Creating Sustainable Landscapes over the last few months. I asked them to cut down nearly 1,000 bamboo trees, and remove buckthorn, honeysuckle, burning bush, and English ivy from the front of my yard. It's been quite a project! The team is wonderful to work with. They know so much about healthy landscapes, and they care deeply about their work. They just finished clearing the last of the invasive plants and planting native shrubs and a wildflower area. I cannot wait to see how this all develops and to have them back to tackle the rest of my forest! I've included one before picture, several "during" pictures, and a few after pictures. Highly recommend!
We had CSL install native landscaping around our house, replacing the traditional landscaping which included over 50,000 pounds of rocks that needed to be removed. We are very happy with the installation and are excited to see it grow in over the next 1-2 years. Joey has been extremely responsive to questions and concerns that we had throughout the process and went out of his way to source ferns for our project. We plan to hire CSL to do the maintenance weeding for the project next year and hopefully the installation will be low maintenance moving into year 3 (unlike our traditional landscaping).
After over two weeks of trying to reach the owner he gave a cold text saying that I was not a good fit. No reason why was given. He has continued to ignore every attempt to reach him since.
Our results are so far very mixed, hence a three star review.
A couple years ago we had a native plant bed and a rain garden installed that are doing very well and we're very happy with it (although, to be fair, a lot of the plants have folded over or look smooshed. so if you're nitpicky, I wouldn't recommend).
Because we were happy with the original work, we decided to hire them again to do another large bed (i.e., thousands of dollars. again.). We did a mix of plugs and seeds, and it's pretty much nothing but a weed bed now. In some sections it's not so bad, but in others you can't tell the difference between the weeds and the plantings.
They first didn't respond to our email quickly asking for advice, and then finally recommended that we weed it. I think we're well past this point. I write this review after spending about an hour weeding crabgrass, pokeweed, and thistle out of our weed bed, making very little progress, so I'm pretty annoyed. I ended up just tossing herbicide at a big section of the bed because there's no way we can keep this up and I'm feeling very overwhelmed. Let's see what happens--If I have a bunch of maintenance work to do, might as well get a clean start :D
For anyone reading, if you want to spend your summer weeding, you don't have to spend a ton of money to do it. Just come hang out at our house.
Came to give us an estimate for native plants, but firm owner was not very knowledgable about common plants, e.g., failing to distinguish a native willow shrub from an invasive shrub.
Reply from Creating Sustainable Landscapes LLC2024.02.13
This is a strange review left by a landowner nearly a year after we visited for a free quote. It should be noted that this reviewer is not an actual client of ours. We spent over an hour walking the landowners property discussing different options for managing a large natural area. The landowner only seemed to want to discuss the identification of specific species and not the larger aspects of the project. We recommended that a full species inventory be conducted in the spring (a fee based service) before moving forward on a management plan. Ultimately the landowner notified us that he would be utilizing a different company. We agreed that they may be better suited for the project and wished him luck.
Alyssa Thibodeau2023.08.29
I have had a great experience working with Creating Sustainable Landscapes. The gardens they created turned out even better than I hoped and everyone I interacted with was really kind. The rain garden has eliminated standing water in our yard and we frequently get compliments on our easement wildflower planting. Even though the gardens were only planted a few months ago, we are already seeing an increase of monarchs and other pollinators in the yard.
Edited as of 8/1/2023
I wanted to add an update to my review. While I appreciate their work during installation, I am greatly disappointed with their support post installation. Our of the 3 patches I installed, two of them are doing badly with little to no growth and I have 0 response from them on what I can do better on my part. I see lot of weeds growing in one variety of the plant. Many dried up inspite of having lot of rains. All I wanted was a response on what I can do on my part to have a success. So if you are new to native plants like me I would have better communication with this company before the payment on how to handle growth issues. I have paid close $1000 for the two patch which looks like need rework next year. I had a good experience with their installation but a tough time figuring out post installation issues. Partly am new to native plants and need more support had I know I wouldn't get good support I would have thought twice before going with them.
I had a a amazing experience with creating sustainable landscape. Alyson was my on point. She was great to work with. I had short listed the native plants and she covered most of the fav during installation. They went above and beyond and helped me clean up some of the winter storm damages. The whole crew was communicative throughout the whole process and also very economical. Would definitely recommend them if you looking to add native plants to your garden. I can't wait for my garden to flourish and fill with beautiful flowers
Fantastic experience having the team at Creating Sustainable Landscapes transform our overgrown front yard into something we really enjoy. Very professional and did an amazing job.
UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT. Throw out every review that mentions Drew. He sold the company to a person named Chris who is really bad at all aspects of his job. Terrible to get hold of. Doesn't follow instructions. Took multiple times showing them the property boundaries before they maybe kinda understood, even though they told me multiple times they were sure about the job. Didn't use true native seeds which was the entire point of the multiple thousand dollar job. Didn't kill many invasives, which is what I hired them to do. Did kill many natives, which is not what I hired them to do. Killed 5 of my baby redbuds I had been taking care of. Replaced them with smaller ones, 4/5 of which never produced leaves this spring. Sent me a fraudulent invoice. When I paid the correct amount, he asked me why I didn't pay the whole amount. In his defense, he did accept my explanation. But I never got any compensation for the red buds he killed. Terrible to get hold of. At one point I had tried calling for weeks and sending emails and didn't get a response until I just happened to bump into him in a restaurant bathroom. 0/10. Go to any other native landscaper around here. Again, disregard anything that mentions Drew. Maybe Drew was good. Chris is not.
Verified Company
