Joe’s Landscaping & Concrete

Fantastic customer service! Jaime went above and beyond to make sure my job was done right the first time. He walked the entire grounds with me and answered any questions I had for zero-​scaping my back yard. We must have talked for around 45 minutes about my project. Even Yoana, the office manager, came over to help me out as well.
I know that Jaime was busy dealing with multiple customers but he never missed a beat and was able to help out everyone with their needs. I know why Joe’s was able to expand to this location; it is because they run a great company and are constantly involved with projects all over the valley and even the Bay Area. I got to see these projects on their screens in their office.
Getting back to their service, I was missing a piece to finish my project and Jaime got on the phone and called up a supplier and they had it in! I was so impressed by his willingness to help me out and even call in a favor for me, even though this was my first time at his location. That’s why I will be back in the near future!
Great job on making me a customer for life! Support local and visit one of their two locations today.

I went here to see about getting some work done on my yard. I came in with a very basic sketch of my yard with exactly what I want done. I have a stupidly simple yard. It’s basic rectangle. I wanted a no nonsense 10×10 square cement pad for a patio with a cement walkway going down the side to the front yard and beside the patio I wanted another 10×10 square of DG (decomposed granite). I am going to put in raised garden beds there and I wanted to keep the rest of the yard grass as I have 3 small kids who need the room to run amok. I told him I wanted it like this to optimize space and allow for more grass for the kids to play in.
I showed him my plans, I had full measurements and they were to scale. Joe looked at it for about 20 seconds but said nothing. Then he flipped the paper over and began sketching what HE thought my yard should look like. He would do a curving walkway around the whole thing, there were no straight lines anywhere, all flowing curves and such. Trees here and shrubs there.
I looked at it tried to be positive. I said that I thought his design looked very nice. I mean if I was retired and had no kids and no desire to really use my back yard but just look at it then this would be perfect! However I was looking for function over form. I told him that while all those curved lines looked very nice they were not very usable. What cement there was lost almost 50% of its actually functional space. On top of that, because he had optimized for design over use he had cut the usable lawn space in half. The DG pad was nowhere to be seen, not sure where that went. And where did these trees and shrubs come from? I had not asked for them. Heck I had not asked for a design consultation. I said, «Here is my sketch, how much for you to do this?» and instead he had totally ignored me and gone off on his own wild tangent.
I told him, No, I’m not looking for flowing designs, I’m looking for 100% optimized space. My back yard is decent sized but it’s not huge and I can’t just ditch half of it to designs of whimsy. I want solid, usable space. To this he told me that I didn’t understand his design and that he had a degree in design! And then he started to go into how much resale value it would add to my house. You know what is a great idea, insulting your customers, ignoring their needs and then trying to sell them things they don’t want nor need so you can charge them quadruple what they should have paid.
I was going to give them two stars but after reliving this experience by writing it down I’m taking it down to one. I get art (I manage artists) but I also value function (I manage engineers) and I feel that true beauty comes when form follows function.
So I picked up my notes and walked out without another word to him. Yeah it was rude and I’m not ever really like that. Sure Joe had treated me like some rube who couldn’t figure out what an «upsell» was and was trying to get away with highway robbery but still I admit, I was smug and rude. Fear not, karma came to set me straight.
I then hired the neighborhood lawn «dude» who my neighbors recommended and he just made matter worse, so much worse. I thought I could hire him to do some of the heavy lifting and I would do the rest of it. He mows lawns in the area and swore up and down that he was a MASTER of sprinkler systems. He told me that he could work wonders on mine and the way he talked about it I thought he could. I’m an engineer myself and he talked like one as well. I had two broken heads that he said he could fix. And he did a great job on those. And he did a great job at mowing and some other basic lawn care stuff. Then he moved the rest of the system into the back yard so that you could not see it from the street. Ok, I was down with that. He disconnected the wires and now I have no idea what he hooked them up to or how but it’s not the controller. I asked him to do a french drain to drain water out of the backyard and to the front yard/​street but he didn’t account for slope and now water drains INTO my backyard. I asked him to flatten a pad for the DG and told him where to put it. I even put down stakes with string. he ignored that and did it in the middle of my yard instead. And he would show up at random times to do work, like say… 9pm at night or 4:30 in the morning and then disappear for days and days. he came to me and asked for an advance on the work that I paid as he was a nice guy and lived in the neighborhood. He came back two days later with a bill for the full amount. I pointed out that I had given him an advance just two days ago he tried to argue with me. In the end I paid $ 700 for him to freak out my wife, break my whole irrigation system, install a flood system for my back yard and pretty much screw everything up. So now my front yard is dead and my neighbors hate me because they think I just let it go.

When I first moved out to the Central Valley, the only thing here that they offered new homeowners was a front yard. Now, that isn’t a bad thing but when the rest of the front lawns look exactly like your neighbor’s front lawn, it is a bit ‘ho-​hum’ like. No personality, no excitement.
Landscapers out here are a dime a dozen. Someone who knows somebody is a landscaper. What scares the bajeebers out of me is when they don’t have a license. One guy came to me and said he doesn’t have a license so that he can pass the savings to me. Sure pal, whatever.
In comes Joe’s Landscaping & Concrete… fully licensed landscaper. The owner, Joe Garcia, is awesome. He is very personable and loves to conduct business. However, its not the type of business where he forces you to spend more than you need to, nor is he the type of person who will tell you something looks good when he doesn’t think so.
Joe’s expertise comes from experience… and not just looking at someone else’s yard and say «Oh look… that looks nice. I can do that too!» Joe’s idea magically pops into his head to make each house, front yard and back yard, look the best fit to each home. Joe’s prices are slightly higher than most landscapers in the area, but his work reflects that. His crew are among the most professional group of landscapers out here. Even their maintenance crew are professional.
He recently opened up this location in Newman where now, he sells a lot of stones, rocks, plants, and all sorts of landscaping supplies. I was there for the grand opening of his Newman store and wow, does he have a lot of things to look at. If you’re into landscaping, you owe it to yourself to check this place out. Most of Joe’s employees are his own family members, as he introduced me to them. They are all very nice and very family orientated business.
I hired Joe to do my first house. He did such an extremely good job that I hired him to do my second house soon after the first house was sold. I trusted his ability to give me a yard that I would enjoy and I basically told him, «Joe…here’s a blank canvas. Gimme something that looks good.» And he did.
If you have absolutely no idea on what you want for your yard or how to personalize it to fit you, then Joe Garcia is the guy to talk to. If you already have an idea of what you want from your yard, then Joe Garcia is the guy to bring it to reality.