Mad River Property Management

Love working with these folks. They are there when we need them. Ed, Susan, Grant and the crew are reliable, responsive and reasonable. We are lucky to be working with them. Thanks for caring.

In July 2017 we hired Mad River Gardens (MRG), owned by Ed Read, to create a privacy hedge on our property. Many things went wrong with this project. First, the crew somehow didn't think it was necessary for the trees to be planted all the way in the ground. The location being on a slope, the backside of the trees had their root balls fully above grade. When we brought this to the attention, of Ed Read, he shared "Plant 'em high"... To address this issue, the crew came back, put more compost on top of the exposed root balls with a bunch of cedar bark mulch, and called it good. A few rain storms quickly washed all of the material down slope - root balls still exposed.

In the fall of 2017, we were worried about the health of several trees. We sent pics, emailed and called Ed - he continued to say the trees were fine, but never came to look at them. Winter came and went and in the spring of 2018, several trees continued to look in poor health. We continued to contact Ed, but still couldn't get him to come and look at the trees to evaluate them.

In the fall of 2018 - we asked Ed to help us with protecting the trees from deer browsing and then he would also get to see them. He said he could take on this project. (The winter before we had done this ourselves, but Ed said he had a better way of protecting the trees and so we hired him to do this work.) Week after week passed, and MRG never came to do the winterizing for our hedge. They continued to tell us that they were coming, so we relied on this. Finally they came on December 3rd to put up the deer fence - the deer ate the hedge the night before. To make matters worse, the fence was so shoddy, that the deer got in and did more browsing.

Now we have an eaten hedge, with several dying trees, that is a complete eyesore and Ed refuses to do anything about it. Not that this is surprising, outside of emailing, we couldn't get him to respond to us for nearly two years, until of course there was more money to be made by fencing the trees.

Ed has not only been terrible with regard to customer service, he has also been incredibly rude and disrespectful. And, in the end, has taken us to the tune of $3,500 - leaving us with the horrible mess that must now be removed.

To deal with the problem, we've brought in a reputable landscape/tree company - the owner is a certified arborist. His assessment of the trees is this - from their irregular appearance he doubts they were ever nursery trees, he believes they were dug up field trees.

My hope with sharing our experience is to save you from using this company. Ed Read doesn't show up, doesn't care about his reputation, doesn't stand behind his work, or honor his warranty. He is a person with very questionable ethics, and he is Mad River Gardens.

I was trying to get my wedding flowers here but when I questioned a non refundable Deposit of $75 before they could give me estimates, I was abruptly told they didn't want to do business with me. I was really disappointed and surprised by this as I feel like I had been very courteous and appreciative of their time, and dont think any of my questions to clarify were out of line in any way. I was also very surprised when I was asked to place money down before finding out what estimates of things would be. How would a client know if they wanted to save the date with them if they weren't given estimates first. I wish this had been a more positive experience and am really saddened by how this was handled.Customer service skills are very poor here, I would not plan anything with them of importance.