New York Plantings Irrigation and Landscape Lighting

I wanted to describe my negative experience of working with Todd Nappi and New York Plantings. Me and my girlfriend, a practicing landscape architect, hired Todd’s firm to install a green roof designed by my girlfriend, on a house I recently purchased in Brooklyn. We found Todd’s firm online. It has a very nice website, regularly updated blog and Todd was very responsive to our initial inquires. When we first met him, he was really friendly, professional and presented us with a good bid, so we decided to hire him. As soon as the 50% deposit was paid ($19k), his behavior changed. First he cancelled a planned weekend trip to a nursery, saying he was busy. Although annoyed, we didn’t complain, because it was a weekend after all. Next problem occurred when Todd’s team came to bring green roof materials. They didn’t secure them properly and on the same day the materials were flying all over our street blown by the wind. As a result, we had police called on us. Todd, when notified, wouldn’t even show up to the site. Then it turned out that contrary to his claims he wasn’t insured properly (he didn’t have workers comp). We didn’t let him work on the job till he would get proper insurance. Todd said it would take him a few days to get the policy but weeks later, and countless excuses later, it started seeming to us as he was deceiving us. So we demanded delivery of rest of the pre-purchased materials (soil) and were going to cancel the job. Todd kept telling my girlfriend he was too busy to deliver the soil and that he was working on scheduling a truck. When I finally called him myself to express my dissatisfaction, he physically threatened me using extremely vulgar language. But it seems like he got scared of potential issues resulting from his threats, and finally delivered the soil. According to our calculations, confirmed by multiple conversations with material suppliers, and generously accounting for the little delivery labor he did, we think NY Plantings still owes us $7k. Todd claims that his firm owes us nothing and justified it with prices much higher than his bid and completely outside the range quoted to us by suppliers. When we asked him to provide receipts he stopped responding to our calls and emails. It has been almost two months since we have heard from him, despite our repeated attempts to communicate with him.

Working with Todd has been the worst professional experience I’ve ever had, and this review does not come close to reflecting how bad this experience was. As I said, he has a nice website and is online savvy. Possibly he will write a reply to this review, justifying his actions and portraying us as unreasonable clients. He might even quote the Bible or use language of moral justice, which will look like words of an honest person. Truth is we were extremely patient with him and willing to accommodate him. If one digs a little deeper on various review sites, it turns out there are multiple reviews of people having basically the same horrible experience as us. There are also multiple complaints on New York Plantings on Better Business Bureau’s page. On the other hand, many of NY Planting’s positive reviews seem fake to me, some are written by Todd Nappi himself, some are from discontinued user accounts, some by the same woman that posts on their blog, and one is even from someone who lives in India. Their business street address is a post office, so good luck finding Todd if you need to see him in person. Contrary to what he told us first, he later said he lives somewhere in PA. Please for your own sake do not work with Todd Nappi’s firm. I believe people like him should not be allowed to practice this profession in New York City.
Furthermore, if you are a client, who has similar stories of working with NY Plantings and you would like to share them, please contact me. I would like to make a website that will describe our experience of working with him in a lot more detail, including email exchanges, phone records, photos, links, and make sure it comes up next to his site when searching for NYC green roof contractors. I really believe people need to be warned about businesses like this one.