We contacted Garden Artisans and several landscape companies near Princeton for consultation regarding replacement of aged rhododendrons, azaleas, and evergreen shrubs damaged by wet and heavy snows in recent years.

Garden Artisans was the first to reply to our inquiries and immediately scheduled a Saturday survey and consultation.

Peter Jamet, the owner, came and discussed our objectives, and budget. We have a colonial home sited on a corner lot on 3 acres with old growth hardwoods in Princeton. As we don’t have deer fencing and do have deer, we wanted deer-proof landscaping and natural looking plantings. Within a week of the consultation Peter was ready to present his design proposal.

He brought scaled drawings of the plantings across the front and side of our house and a bed near the driveway entrance surrounding our carriage lamp post and mailbox. Together with the drawings he had photos of every tree species, shrub, flower and grass proposed for the plantings. He described why he had chosen them. Part of his plan of scale and distribution was to create color throughout the seasons and evergreen color sustained throughout the year with certain elements of the planting.

He has tailored the cost to our budget and offered both upgrade options and cost saving options for each of the specimen trees. He recommended the ideal time for planting so as to get the plantings successfully established before the winter. We set a date and Peter with his crew came and prepared the plot exactly as scheduled. Two weeks before the planting he provided photos of the exact specimen trees and shrubs to be installed. Once the beds were prepared Peter again came to position the specimens personally and ask our review and approval before actually putting the plants in the ground.

Immediately after the planting we were taking a three week holiday and Peter provided attending and watering to ensure the health our new landscaping. He again came, unprompted and reviewed all the shrubs six weeks after planting. The plantings are now ten weeks in the ground and every plant is in excellent condition. We are extremely pleased with the design and selected species. It has been a pleasure working with Garden Artisans.

The work was done exactly on schedule and was professional and very careful in removing old shrubbery and cleaning up and reseeding areas not to be replanted. The entire job was done within our budget in a very artfully conceived, professional and carefully planned manner.

We have owned several homes and done projects of this scale but have never had this level of precision and care in the design, selection of specimens, planting and after-care. In other projects we have experienced a number of trees and shrubs dying within weeks of the planting and have had to pay to replace them. Garden Artisans insured our planting and, knock knock, until today we have no casualties in ANY plant they installed. Garden Artisans exceeded our expectations and we are already planning further embellishments of our backyard in the spring.