Lazar Landscape Design

Their project manager disappeared halfway through the project and when we asked the owners to come back and help us get what we wanted they stopped returning our calls. Also, they wanted us to sign up for monthly maintenance for $500 in which they would basically mow and blow and make sure the lines were running. The end result looks totally amateur and we now need to hire someone to come and fix it.

We heard great things about Lazar from friends in the business, so we contracted with them to re-landscape our front yard without reading reviews or getting other references first. We had to terminate the relationship after four months of ongoing unresponsive communication, missed appointments, and excuses. We no longer trusted Lazar to perform an expensive job without unreasonable complications.

We explained our reasons and absorbed significant design costs to end the contract. While they did apologize for their poor performance, they didn't offer to defray our costs or otherwise compensate us. We can't recommend Lazar.

Good designers but be careful as they will continue iterating without warning of excessive charges. Their actual landscape work came in at 20% higher than other contractors

A couple of years ago, we had them do a project to clear and grade a reasonably large section of our backyard to make enough space for a large trampoline. They were a little expensive, but I feel like we got what we paid for. They were prompt, professional, and really did a nice job. I had filed away in the back of my mind that when we finally get around to a more significant landscaping "remodel" that they would be great.

Then our 30+ year-old irrigation system started having some problems last summer and I reached out to Lazar to see if they could do the repairs. They said "yes, " and after some early scheduling hiccups (one of which was my fault), it's been largely radio silence. I'd reach out after a few weeks, they would say that they would contact me to schedule something in the next month, then nothing.

This process repeated itself for months, though with the winter rains, it was less-urgent for me. Now that spring has sprung early, I need to get the irrigation system repaired and the same process repeated itself. It was told that they have been swamped "recently, " though we've been trying to schedule something since last August, and then I was told "I apologize we have such a long wait in rescheduling the appointment you had to cancel." Seems like they are passive aggressively blaming the scheduling problem on my cancellation from last August.

I know that cancellation was my fault, but, come on, that was seven months ago! So, my thoughts appear to be pretty consistent with some of their other reviews: they do good work but are hit-or-miss with scheduling and responsiveness. That rings true since I had one "hit" and one "miss." I'll definitely look for someone else to help me going forward, though.

Pam and Asa offer complete service from design to construction to maintenance. Their vision for our yard exceeded our expectations or even our own ideas. We had many "Wow! Never thought of that" moments - including the biggest - moving the garage door to create front yard space. Love how they created so many "rooms" in our yard so we are never bored and always find a shady or sunny spot depending on the temperature.

The work is well done - from demo to hardscape (including stone courtyard and wall, ipe deck, fire pit, and kitchen construction and installation) and plant choices. They stand behind their work and make the whole process easy. A bonus is having them as our maintenance providers. They know the yard, they have ownership and understand the vision. It's been two years since completion and we are still thrilled with the results. We get many compliments from neighbors and local "walkers". Check out their website for awesome photos of their work then give them a call/email!

My pictures say it all. The posts on the railing are crooked so the cap boards have detached. I have called and emailed with no response and no one picks up the phone.

Lazar took my dirt hillside back, front and side yards and transformed them into a usable and beautiful space. I'm so grateful to my designer Cassidy and everyone who had a hand in my outdoor transformation. The follow through before, during and AFTER is imperative should any issue arises. Transparency and communication is what you get with everyone at Lazar. Big, small, luxurious or simple projects. I cannot say enough good things.

We have just completed a job with Lazar and found their company a pleasure to work with. They have a very professional team that's makes sure the job is completed to your satisfaction and on time. The design aspect with Lisa was seemless, she takes your ideas along with her expertise and creates a concept that develops into a plan. The feedback and follow through in the process are critical to a job that is well thought out to ensure everyone's expectations are met within a framework and budget.

The job was performed by Miguel and Martin that take great pride in their work and work hard to deliver a quality product. Maribel is the project manager and stops by daily to make sure the job is being done correctly and meets the expected timelines. Her knowledge of reading the plans and foreseeing any issues is so important. Their efficiency is apparent as they have a delivery truck delivering materials when needed so the workers never leave the site and only materials that are needed in each phase are there.

We are now working with Linda to do some follow up maintenance to protect our investment and have found her knowledge of plants and experience very helpful. Overall a job well done. They are not the cheapest but you pay for what you get. I would recommend them.

EDIT 4/27/18: I logged into Yelp for the first time in many months to write a positive review on my gym/trainer and saw that Pam responded (finally.and had to maybe since the situation was made public?). I am glad at the end of her response Pam acknowledged she should have been much more responsive. After all, if she took all those proactive actions that she listed and did not communicate them with me, how am I or anyone to know that anything is actually happening?

That by the way is Business 101 (I manage clients and have been client-facing most of my career as well). Silence to a client = no forward movement from their point of view. You have to set your prospect/customer's expectations and guide them on next steps on their journey. There continued to be silence after I called her office two times and asked for a call back on next steps as well as emailing her multiple times.

I abandoned the Lazar ship after that and moved forward with another company. Also, I don't understand her accusations of my taking advantage of her time for free. I contacted Lazar several years ago (I think before she took over ownership of the company according to other reviews) to see what a reasonable budget would be for implementing a master landscaping plan for my home.

As I originally mentioned Barry came out and was very thoughtful and suggested we could stage it in phases and what those phase could look like. Note that Barry has left Lazar and has her own Landscape Design company (Rock Paper Scissors Design Build). I hope her business is flourishing as she was great: https://www.houzz.com/pro/rockpaperscissorslandscape/rock-paper-scissors-landscape-design-build So when I was ready to implement the first phase I called Lazar and asked them to come out to discuss.

That short meeting (about 35-40 minutes) was the ONE and ONLY time Pam came out. I don't know how any business expects to get work on a project without an initial conversation and assessment of its scope and cost. I've interacted with two other well known east bay design build firms in the same way (McCutcheon and Levitch) on different projects and followed the same protocol with no issues.

I was going to contact Barry at Rock Paper Scissors next to get a bid, but my regular contractor after hearing of my situation with Pam/Lazar was equally disgusted and told me he would prioritize my project in his schedule and it all worked out. I had originally gone to Lazar instead of my current contractor as I thought since this project primarily involved an outdoor space with planting considerations, a Landscape Design company instead of a general contractor would be a better fit.

In the end I did get my project completed to my satisfaction and enjoyment (and the expressed admiration of my friends and neighbors) and on budget.the same budget cost that Pam said was unreasonable by the way. Private message me if you want to see pictures. Maybe I'll get around to uploading them to Houzz for folks to see.

An exceptional team that knows how to not only listen to their clients but also how to translate their ideas into a reality. Its also onbvious that works for the owners and operators truly enjoys being there and that speaks volumes of the value to the surrounding community and everyone they serve. Thank you Asa and everyone else at Lazar. You deserve to enjoy success I'm sure you will continue to experience and I hold heartedly recommend these people to anyone who is considering a need for their services.

Meh. We recently finished a fairly large project with them. The on-site crews were great. Friendly and hard working. I cannot believe how much material they moved on/off/around our yard including dealing with steps and a sort of tight walkway to get to the work area. The overall result is nice yet average with that kind of spend. However, working with this company was a bit painful.

As best I can tell, while the Lazar name has been around for a while the current ownership group has only been in place for a few years and is headed by the former plant designer, Pam. While that means the planting is good there is a top level void as she seems to lack construction and project management experience. Our yard is a down/side slope and the project involved building a lot of retaining walls.

We went with a design-build firm because we wanted some flexibility as they worked through the lot. That went pretty well. Still, at every meeting during wall construction, when the design was most fluid, Pam would say something could be built and then glance over at Maribel, the construction manager, for either assurance or correction. One place things went awry was our main seating area designed in a corner of the yard to have a fire pit with seating around 3 sides.

In construction the corner had to be rounded off because of the roots and canopy of an existing Oak tree. That skewed everything else. But they couldn't help us with that. I'm pretty sure they don't have any CAD function. We had to rough out the design on our own. The kicker was they couldn't understand how we placed the fire pit even when I marked where one corner should go.

They thought it should line up with stairs to that level. But they obviously hadn't looked at their idea because it would've resulted in the fire pit being too close to one wall for seating while leaving a bunch of excess space on the opposite side. It was ridiculous. There were a few other less significant oddities. We came home one day and found a roll of synlawn on our driveway even though we'd never talked about what style we wanted.

They once left sample paito tile but never mentioned it until a couple of weeks later when they said they needed a decision because it was to be installed a couple of days later. That created an issue because we didn't like their original choices. Despite many substantial design change orders they never checked to see if we wanted to change any of the original planting design (we did) and again simply told us plants were going to be delivered in 2 days.

Most of that was communicated via email which invariably added in some delays and the ubiquitous reply saying 'I'm really busy. That's not an excuse.' Stuff like that happened pretty much through completion of the project. If you don't already know you will soon find out that there aren't a lot of choices out there. Hopefully Lazar will grow into its reputation. In the meantime, I'm off to look for someone to fix up our front yard.

I needed a contractor for drainage and landscape work and found Lazar doing a number projects in the neighborhood. I contacted them and they responded promptly. Their work was of high quality, timely, and professional. They started work on the date they committed to, and stayed focused on the project, which was completed ahead of schedule. I am very pleased with the results of their work, but I equally appreciate their integrity. Unanticipated events will occur in construction, but Lazar handled the project professionally from start to finish. I view Lazar as an exceptional company. I will gladly use them again; and will recommend them to friends without hesitation.

I am completely annoyed with my experience with Lazar. First the website questionaire, wasn't even sure it worked and after getting a error several times, I gave up but then they called me back, so I guess it went through after all. After playing phone tag for a week or so and their phone system, if you dial an extension, it hangs up on you, but I wasn't deterred by that, just left a general voicemail (some companies have bad phone systems).

Finally got an direct email contact, several emails later, I get a call back from a different associate - mind you this has been after about 3 weeks - the guy tells me they only do pavers and patios. I have a big backyard that is a blank slate, I have some ideas but need an overall master plan and some landscape guidance for example what kind of plants to plant, how to build a garden from the dirt up, some hardscape structures, how to deal with some drainage issues. Based on reviews here and their photos here and their website photo gallery, I assume they knew plants and gardens, pools, water features, kids play areas, carpentry but the associate I talked to said they only do patios, they weren't really into building gardens and that Concord was out of their area.

And he said it like Concord was really beneath him. I suppose I dodge a bullet on working with such a snobby company. Maybe they should fix their website and only showcase what they actually do.

The business just changed owners. not sure if the new owners are worse than the old owners, but nothing has changed. it took months to get them to correct invoicing where we charged but no service provided, even with back up emails, etc. from their own project managers. only did their crews loose the keys into our yard, the group would not reimburse us for re-keying. this occurred at the same time we had them quote on replacing our drip water system and they went ahead and installed without us approving the quote. so glad we don't use them anymore, even though they are only a few blocks away.

These guys are terrible in terms of maintenance. they are supposed to come every 2 weeks, and only show up about 1x every 6 weeks. they recently increased our rates from $100 - 150/month without telling us. i do not recommend them.

Lazar just completed an external lighting and backyard retaining wall and fencing project for us. The retaining wall and fencing aspect of this project involved difficult sloping terrain so I was a bit apprehensive about problems that might pop up. Instead, their work exceeded my expectations. And when they did run into a problem, i.e. they had underestimated the volume of dirt fill needed to complete the retaining wall project, they came up with a creative way to get the fill to the back yard in volume, and did not come back to us for an increase in the budget.

I was extremely pleased by the quality of workmanship of both the retaining wall and the fence with the latter requiring working around tree stumps and undulating terrain. They literally transformed our backyard. They also did an excellent job on the low voltage exterior lighting installation using up lighting on several trees and located down lighting on stairs and the driveway for optimal effect.

I should also note that in the contract, they had indicated that any foliage cut to install the fence would be my responsibility to remove from the backyard and I anticipated any tree stump removal would be an additional cost. They ended up removing all of the tree trimmings and stumps at no cost to me which was a very pleasant surprise and made the final before and after picture of the yard even more striking.

I would also add that the crew was very respectful and careful about not damaging anything in the process of carrying out the job. I was very concerned upfront about an underground drainage pipe that I had recently had installed that was in the vicinity of the planned retaining wall and they were very careful to mark out the path of the pipe and work around it.

Lazar just completed a planting project for me, and the early returns look great! Backing up a bit: I've talked to any number of different people to help me out with this project over the last year. I've learned that the world of garden landscaping can mostly be split into three types of providers: (a) the larger professionals, like Lazar, (b) the boutique folks, and (c) the guys with a truck and a crew who do a lot of the work for the first two groups, but occasionally hustle their own business too. I've talked to them all and a have a good sense for the pros and cons of each.

The guys with trucks work hard and are cheap but usually don't have a good design sensibility or know how to wrestle with the finer points. The boutique folks typically have strong opinions about their craft, but often don't listen well or respond promptly because they don't invest in scaling their business. And the professionals are exactly what you'd expect: exorbitantly priced, but. well, professional. Lisa was my expert guide from Lazar.

She was highly responsive, flexible, and most importantly, embraced my wish list while influencing the project with her own creativity. She was awesome. (Special hat tip for collaborating quickly and effectively over Pinterest to get the design right.) I'm not sure if I just lucked out, but we got things scheduled super quick rather than the usual "yeah, we'll be there in 3 months".

More incredibly, they started and finished exactly when promised with minimal disruption to my life. Nice work! Let's talk price: it was expensive -- there are no two ways about it. They worked hard to fit my stated budget, but they obviously have more mouths to feed than a guy with a truck. That all said, I'm happy to pay the premium for the professionalism and quality result. Better to pay a king's ransom once with certainty than to pay small amounts repeatedly for half-assed jobs. Nice work, Lisa!

Lazar Landscape Design and Construction designed and installed our hillside back and side yards for our home in the Oakland Hills. Initially, we provided the firm a design that we had drawn up by an independent landscape architect. Our backyard was tricky with a pretty decent slope, gophers, a meadow of weeds, and poor soil that turned into slick clay when it rained. Lisa, our designer, provided us a bid for our original design but also (on her own initiative), came up with an alternative, less traditional design that not only was stunning but also considerably less expensive.

The crew that worked on our project was polite, efficient, and hardworking. Maribel, the project manager, definitely has a can-do attitude and it was a pleasure to have her oversee our project. We finished the project on schedule and with no unpleasant budgetary surprises. Our yard is now beautiful with concrete retaining walls that have been hand plastered, anodized aluminum steps, decomposed granite pathways, and drought tolerant grasses, shrubs, and trees.

Our previous, impractical steep slope has been regraded to several flat levels so it is pleasant (not to mention safe) to stroll through the garden or play on the lawn. The transformation of our backyard has been quite unbelievable and the maintenance has been minimal which was exactly what we hoped for. After the job was completed we had a few issues.

The professional manner in which Asa has resolved the issues is a testament to the integrity of this firm. I highly recommend Lazar Landscape to anyone looking to add beauty to their surroundings and especially to homeowners with sloping lots.

We've used Lazar for three projects now. The first was a complete overhaul of our backyard in April -- it was an uneven, poorly graded, weed-covered mess when we moved in. The designer, Lisa, did a great job working with us (and was totally patient with us changing our minds from the pie in the sky dream backyard to a more reasonable plan once we saw the initial price!).

They totally transformed it -- new patio, stepping stone pathways, drainage, grading, lawn and garden -- and it looks beautiful! More importantly, we no longer have to worry about improper drainage, and water pooling near our foundation -- they did a great job with that. Then this fall we wanted to put in a drought-tolerant garden in the front yard, and did not have much of a budget.

They were totally willing to work with us - finding appropriate plants, and allowing us to do some of the work to keep the cost down. Finally, we used them for end of year maintenance, and they were seriously great -- fixed a bender border that we had tried to install(!), pruned, weeded, the whole she-bang. They've done a fantastic job with everything we've thrown at them, and have consistently been flexible with our needs and budget -- getting us the look we want, but finding ways to achieve it for less.

My experience with Lazar Landscape and their designer Barry Sacher was everything I hoped for. Before Barry and her crew started, my back yard looked like an overgrown vacant lot. Now it is a beautiful and natural extension of my home as well as a place I enjoy every day. Barry really listened to my ideas and needs for how I wanted to use my backyard.

She came back with multiple creative designs that truly reflected what I was looking for within my budget constraints. Once we finalized the plan, Barry walked me through the entire process so their would be no surprises. Once we moved from concept to execution, Barry brought in her crew. They came in on time and on budget. They even went beyond the original plans including some additional work without charging me any extra.

Throughout it all Barry and her crew were wonderful to work with. Barry was responsive via both phone and email, was a great listener and had a wonderful array of creative ideas and solutions to offer. She takes a lot of pride and care in her work and it shows in the finished product. I now have an amazing backyard that I enjoy with my friends and family.

It is incredibly low maintenance which was one of my key requirements, drought tolerant, beautiful and has lots of different spaces to enjoy. I get compliments on it every time someone sees it. I would highly recommend Barry and Lazar Landscape.

We had a front and back yard in Moraga that was in dire need of work. We didn't have any idea who to go with but saw Lazar's signs in the area. Lisa was our designer and provided a great plan for low maintenance and drip irrigated plants for the front & back yard. We wound up bidding the job to another contractor or 2 once the plans were completed by them, and Lazar actually was extremely competitive price wise with other contractors.

The entire job went well, their crew was extremely hard working, coming in at 7:00 am and leaving at around 4. They had a bunch of crew members who were very considerate about our property. The job took two weeks and was on time and on budget. This firm is very professional and worth the money, we highly recommend.

The plants are not appropriate for the microclimates they are put in. The owner was not responsive to feedback, and once the job was over and the irrigation was botched, I never heard from him again. For "Maintenance", this company sends out workers who know nothing about plants and charge $50. an hour. I don't know how a company with their business ethics stays in business.