Quality Produce, Plants and Landscaping

Tim _{on ChamberofCommerce.com}

Nov 29th, 2022

BUYER BE WARE
In January of 2022 we saw an ad on facebook for evergreen trees - green giants and emerald arborvitaes. John or JR Bowen who owns Quality Produce & Plants located at 100 Decatur Street, Shelbyville, TN visited our property for an assessment. We have a one-acre property and wanted privacy trees around the perimeter of our property. We ended up purchasing 40 green giants and 14 emerald arborvitaes. JR gave us a one-year guarantee on all trees. We never visited his “nursery” as he calls it in Shelbyville which is not a nursery like you would typically think. Looking at google maps it is a very small site with a few stands.
JR is horrendous when it comes to communicating with clients and showing up on time or even on the day he originally says. He just no shows and gives a million excuses. In fact, he never completed the original installation of trees and I had to finish them myself. He was supposed to mulch the trees and never did.
I completed the project myself as JR became too unreliable and unresponsive to any texts or phone calls. His voice mailbox is “full” and you cannot leave him a voicemail.
Unfortunately for us, 19 green giants and 7 emeralds died during the summer. The trees were watered by hand, a pain staking process without an irrigation system. Many attempts to contact JR about the dead and dying trees went unanswered as I just wanted to know if he would honor his one-year guarantee. After weeks of follow ups with JR he finally returned my call and said he would replace the trees. He said he needed to wait for his shipment of trees to arrive in the fall. Fair enough and he said to contact him again when the leaves began falling and cooler temperatures arrived.
Again, the calls and texts began with no response and “promises” to replace the trees. I even said I would get a trailer and drive to Shelbyville an hour and a half from our home in Nashville to pick them up and plant them myself. No labor or time required from JR. After more promises and failures to arrange for tree pick up, I decided to give up. I believe this is exactly what JR wanted. I gave him one final text message of my intent to write a negative review of my experience dealing with him on all websites listed for his business and the Better Business Bureau.
As you can guess that message went unanswered and has led me to write this review. I was really hoping JR was a man of his word and would honor his guarantee. Unfortunately, he is not.
In short, if you have taken the time to look up his business and read some reviews you will see this is a trend with JR and his business. I do not recommend purchasing any product or hiring JR for any service. He is too unreliable, untrustworthy, and has extremely poor communication with clients. There’s a reason his prices are too good to be true.
I had also recommended JR to a coworker to install trees. The project went long over due and again JR never actually finished the job he was paid for.
Do yourself a favor and purchase this type of product at a reputable nursery. One that will honor a guarantee. We have bought products at a nursery around Nashville who refunded when the product died without issue.
This was a loss of thousands of dollars for us and now we must purchase and replace the trees.