Marshall Grain Company

Unfortunately, a year after hiring Marshall Grain for their landscape consulting and installation, I cannot in good faith recommend their services. When I met with her, I found their landscaping expert to be very patronizing and controlling in her methods, while simultaneously contradicting her own advice from meeting to meeting. I requested ecologically-sound processes for developing a xeriscaped design, along with native Texas plant recommendations. All in all, I had a very specific brief when working with her on our landscape design, with a clear and set budget. Not only did her proposed design exceed our budget, but she didn't even complete the yard design, saying that it would be too expensive to do everything we wanted to do. (Which was strange, since she had already gone about $2,000 over budget...why stop there?) To be clear, much of her actual design provided well and above what I had requested in terms of number of plant needing to be planted. But because we liked the xeriscaping design, we ended up hiring Marshall Grain to install the hardscape areas--water drainage and a central walkway. The crew was efficient and respectful. Working with them was the highlight of my experience. The landscape designer had inexplicably dissuaded me from installing decomposed granite in the walkway, opting instead for a less environmental-friendly alternative of weed cloth and pebbles. The weed cloth is already deteriorating into the soil below it, and weeds are rampant in the pathway, despite the barrier. Marshall Grain has been notified of this issue, and simply told me that they do extensive research into ecological weed cloth solutions, and that we received the best environmentally-friendly weed barrier on the market. While that might be technically true, I've been told by other organic gardeners that finding an actually ecological weed cloth is just short of impossible. I would say that Marshall Grain is operating under ignorance of this fact, but I would hate to undermine their apparent expertise. I'm now tasked with pulling the disintegrating fabric up so I can eventually install the granite I originally envisioned. It is what it is. They have somewhat competitive prices on their nursery plants, and I've had good success buying from them over the past decade. But this landscaping experience continues to be a thorn in my side. If you are looking for competence in native Texas and organic gardening, I would direct you to Native Gardeners in Euless. They have true expertise and amenable customer experience. I've hired them for a recent landscaping installation and only have good things to say about my experience. This review is meant to be a recitation of my experiences to help someone else looking for landscaping advice. I am really not interested in bashing the business, or receiving any kind of response from a representative from Marshall Grain for this review. My experience could be a one off, but I felt compelled to share it with my community nevertheless.

We had a great experience with our Marshall Grain landscaping project. They designed a beautiful plan, were prompt and professional throughout the project, and kept the job site clean every day. The crew was hardworking, respectful, and clearly took pride in their work. We’re very happy with the results and would highly recommend them.