5/5
We contracted with Adi of The Golden Tree in April of 2016 to remove the so-called "grass" in our front yard and replace it with more drought-tolerant landscaping, since our grass was mostly crabgrass and was fraught with grass-eating insects seemingly each summer. I also felt bad expending water to keep the crabgrass a beautiful shade of greenish-yellow. :)
Seriously though, this was one of the best decisions that my wife and I have made. We interviewed and met with several landscapers, but Adi sold us when he came to see our yard, took our thoughts on the theme we wanted, and showed his expertise by recommending the plan we felt most comfortable with.
It has now been over 5 years since the new front "garden" or "park", as it were, was completed (it's for sure not a yard), and it looks even more gorgeous than we could have imagined! The plants and trees grew and filled in just as Adi explained they would. Not a day goes by where we don't receive a compliment from a passerby.
The maintenance is minimal, too, compared to mowing the lawn every week and maintaining the equipment needed for that. We like to spend most of our time sitting on the front patio or park bench to soak up the beautiful views, smells and sounds of nature filling our garden, including butterflies, humming birds and hundreds of buzzing bees gathering nectar from our palo verde trees or the many blooming plants we have.
As part of the overhaul, Adi's crew installed drip irrigation, even on the parts of our yard that weren't in scope for re-landscaping. That was going above and beyond. Due to the high water pressure in Thousand Oaks, we developed a couple of water leaks in our existing irrigation pipes. Adi's crew came out and fixed them promptly, and discovered that lower grade underground pipes were used in our yard when the house was built.
We couldn't be happier with our front oasis, and we thank Adi for his wonderful vision. We highly recommend The Golden Tree for any landscaping work you have. I've added before and after photos of our garden so you can see for yourselves what it looked like before (grass), right after the re-landscape (spring 2016), a few months after (summer 2016), and 5 years later (spring 2021).