Francisco's Gardening and Maintenance

Francisco is a wonderful gardener and his crew is top notch. Fast, efficient, and clean.

Not only that, I had two plants in my yard that I had no idea what they were and neither did anyone else I asked including another gardener. Francisco ID'd them immediately, a large honeysuckle on our balcony and a miniature fuchsia. I didn't know it was a fuchsia because it was extremely under-watered. He said just give it water and sure enough, a week later, it popped out a bunch of teeny tiny fuchsia flowers!

I can't recommend Francisco's Gardening and Maintenance highly enough!

Review by Tom

Francisco arrived on time, saw what had to be done, and did it well.
And the price was absolutely right.

Moved into new house and broke the drip-irrigation system, almost immediately. Without a clue to how any of it worked, emailed Francisco (found on Yelp) requesting a visit. Reckoned on the likelihood of any response at 10% and the probability of the problem getting fixed within a month at about 2%. Wrong.

Francisco showed up exactly at the hour agreed-upon 24 hours earlier, about 20 minutes after my email went out. Francisco fixed the problem in a few minutes and refused any payment. He then suggested that I ping him should any other problems or landscaping tasks arise in the future. I think I will.

Francisco cut up 2 garden hoses with his mower, broke a planter pot and a plastic side table with his weed eater, blew dirt, leaves and grass onto the porch, left cans in driveway or on street after being asked not to,
left backyard gate open, blew exhaust fumes in house with using his leaf blower right up against windows etc.
Lied and took No responsibility for damages.

I don't know if this guy is good or not, only that he wanted to charge $5000 for initial clean up which was fine with us, but then wanted to charge us $500+ per week (every week totalling $2000) for maintenance. The guys before, who did a perfectly good job that I had coming to my house since I bought it (4 years total), only charged $98 a month and they went above and beyond $98 per month IMHO. I have no grass and mostly concrete, dog run area, and a deck besides the planted front yard, sides of house, and the stepped slope behind the deck. Not a lot of high maintenance going on.

Maybe it was the area I live in or the type of house I own or he didn't think the yard was worth his time is maybe why he chose to charge that much for maintenance, but seriously, I don't make that much to spend this kind of money on a landscaping maintenance service.

We actually found Francisco's Gardening and Maintenance from Yelp. We were not having good luck from other companies. They would come to our home, talk to us and then never contact us again. When we contacted Francisco, he came to our home promptly, completed a thorough estimate and sent it via email a few days later. I called him and we decided on a date to begin the work.
Sure enough, he arrived on the set date, went over the plans once again, made sure the estimate was fair and answered any questions we had. He started the work on a Saturday; worked Sunday and Monday and completed the work the following Saturday. He removed all over our disgusting weeds, tilled the yard, laid wire so the weeds wouldn't grow back, set up our irrigation system, built a fence, planted all the plants we wanted, and gave us the best sod money can buy (trust me, shady landscapers can save a ton of money from the sod they purchase because the customer doesn't know any better). But Francisco is a man of his word and gets the job done right, fair and beautifully.
Would I recommend Francisco? We already did to two of our neighbors who can't stop praising our yard. People are literally stopping their cars to say how great our yard looks.
Francisco is easy to understand, prompt, punctual, and a hard worker.
Thank you

Francisco and his team did an outstanding job pruning, weeding, trimming and refreshing the landscaping at my new home in Larkspur. The property now looks amazing! Francisco is excellent to work with. He is very responsive and his team arrived on time as scheduled and were incredibly efficient and thorough. I'm looking forward to Francisco and his team continuing to maintain the property on an ongoing basis now. I highly recommend Francisco for all your landscaping and lawn maintenance needs.

Was sadly told they don't have time for me anymore.

The house we bought had been vacant for years and we needed a new lawn. Badly. I found Francisco through Craigslist (along with a few others) and he was the least expensive, so I was skeptical, but hopeful.

He came with his team on Sunday and, after four very full days of work, they had stripped the scraggly grass, tilled the ground, refilled it with quality soil, lay down sod, and fixed our sprinkler system. And with the extra grass, he filled in an area in our side yard for free. It looked beautiful.

But the very best part about Francisco, is that he stands by his work. He has kept coming back to make sure everything is growing like it should, to adjust the timer on the sprinklers, to lay down fertilizer. I didn't know he would do this, it wasn't part of our arrangement. He just does it because it helps the grass grow.

Quality product and old school service. I would give six stars if I could.

I hired Francisco to install my sod and conduct ongoing maintenance on my yard. I let my old, perfectly good maintenance team go because I specifically wanted the same person to both install the yard and maintain it going forward.

Francisco had a convincing sell with his checklist of maintenance items and talk about how carefully they change blades to make sure the lawn was unadulterated by other types of grass. However, it was smoke and mirrors.

First, the sod installation was an epic fail. Raccoons kept rolling up the sod and it was clear the Francisco and his team had no idea how to deal with it. He put netting on the yard which didn't deter the raccoons, but it did trap a ton of leaves on the yard (they hadn't bothered to blow or rake). The leaves subsequently decomposed and added to the destruction of the new sod. Finally a friend recommended a trapper which worked the first night, but not until my lawn was ruined. If I had just done this at first I would have a nice yard, but i got horrible advice from Francisco.

Secondly, while the lawn was under the netting, Francisco and his team continued to come by and charge for regular maintenance which was basically 20 minutes of blowing leaves. They never weeded or tended to the hedges as they said they would.

Finally, when the raccoons were trapped and gone and my lawn looked horrible, rather than try to fix the yard Francisco said he no longer had time for me as a client. He ripped up the netting he had put on the yard -- he left plastic tied and metal stakes littered all over my yard (I have young children who run barefoot out there). I asked if he would at least seed the yard so there was some hope it would grow back. He left seed for me to do it myself. It was not the same kind of seed as the sod -- so much for carefully controlling any taint to the yard!

Even after the whole fail I had tried to stick by these guys and keep them on for regular maintenance and let them fix / finish the job they had started. But my trust in Francisco (based almost entirely on these reviews) was totally misplaced. Once he saw what a horrible outcome we had he just quit.

What a horrible, expensive mistake. Buyer beware.