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Find, rate, and compare home-improvement contractors, health-care providers, repair shops, financial services, veterinarians, stores, dentists, and more than 100 other types of service providers.
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Where to Shop for Plants
Since most garden centers buy—rather than raise—most of what they sell, there is room for tremendous variation in buying standards and the quality of plants being sold. The opinions we collected from consumers on garden centers reflect these big differences.
Where to Find the Best Prices for Plants
Our undercover shoppers found huge price variation among garden centers—perhaps more than in any other subject we cover. Unfortunately, we found the lowest prices at big chains, which receive poor ratings from their customers.
Before Buying Plants, Make a Plan
Do a rough drawing showing your house, other structures, property lines, and desired plants. Get guidelines and ideas from gardening websites, friends with attractive outdoor spaces, and experts.
How to Choose a Tree Care Service
On occasion your trees might become shady characters, done in—and perhaps ultimately brought down—by disease or damage or both. Here's how to find a great branch manager.
How to Save on Tree Care Work
Once you have chosen a company that can do the work well, price becomes your primary consideration. Our undercover shoppers found huge company-to-company price differences for the same jobs.
How to Tell If Your Trees Need TLC
You don’t have to be an expert to spot many potential tree problems. Like most plants, trees have ways of indicating distress. Examine your trees several times a year for these signs of trouble.
Selecting a Lawn Care Service
Before hiring a lawn care service, meet with several and ask for proposals for one year of treatment. Be sure to share your expectations (tolerance for weeds, etc.) and any limits on use of herbicides and pesticides.
Do Lawn Care Services Know What They're Doing?
The proposals Checkbook's undercover shoppers get from lawn care services rarely agree on identification of weed species, presence of disease, need to correct soil acidity, and recommendations on core aeration.
What Do Lawn Care Services Do?
Lawn care services work with different products and techniques, but the results they promise are similar. Companies usually offer customers a selection of “packages” that include specified treatment plans to take place over the course of a year.
