Parker Landscapes

We had a new block-paved driveway laid by Parker Landscapes early in 2023. We had high hopes for Chris and his team based on the attention to detail in Chris’s quote, which was hand-delivered in a glossy booklet and even included a watercolour painting of the proposed design – very professional! The quote was more expensive than others, but we wanted to support a local business and thought we would receive a better service. Regrettably, we didn’t see any of Chris’s previous work in person and relied solely on Facebook recommendations and photos. To be fair, Parker Landscape’s garden designs do look very impressive from their photos, but in hindsight, I wish I had seen one of their driveway jobs before making my decision. When our driveway started to have issues, Chris and I had differing opinions on workmanship quality. Chris freely admitted that he doesn’t usually do small jobs like ours and was doing me a favour as we live locally. Chris and his team struggled with the drainage, which I had to assist with at my own expense, buying additional pipe fittings. They installed the drainage channel in front of our garage with an incorrect fall, resulting in rainwater flowing away from the outlet towards our house and down into the void below from where the end of the channel was sawn off to clear an adjacent gas pipe. The edging blocks were laid unevenly, gaps between blocks were too large to be sand-filled and needed to be pointed with patio resin, and blocks at the entrance of the drive wobbled, again because the gaps were too large. Also, the overall height of the drive was increased more than the existing level, so when they backfilled the flowerbed in front of our house, the soil covered the damp proof course and air vents. Chris’s team did come back to rectify some of the issues, but when we reached an impasse on quality I ended up lowering my standards and paid up. So, why now for my review a year on? Well, to top things off, half the yew hedges that Parker Landscapes planted died, and after a fruitless 6 months of waiting for them to be replaced, I bought new ones and did it myself. Chris said that I hadn’t cared for the hedges correctly, but when I replaced them, I found that they had been planted in only 5” of soil on top of a thick layer of geotextile fabric and sections of concrete from the existing drive base! The front row of blocks is also now starting to work loose again where the patio resin is cracking. Parker Landscapes don’t reply to my messages to rectify the issues, so their guarantee is non-existent. Oh well, you live and learn as they say! I hope others out there have a better experience than we have.