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- Nonprofit and independent
- Takes no advertising or referral fees
- Ratings and reviews by surveyed Consumers' Checkbook and Consumer Reports local subscribers
- Undercover price comparisons
- Complaint counts from local consumer agencies and attorney general offices
- Advice to help you get the best service and value
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.
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.
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.
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.
If you want to hire a lawn care service, our ratings of local businesses will help you find the best outfits. 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.
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.
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.