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We hired Ritchie Louggee (aka Ritchie Alan Lougee, aka Richie Lougee) in 2016 to landscape our new home in Tomball, Texas. He assured us that he was very experienced landscaper, specialized in dirt work and grading and that we could trust him to do an excellent job.  His price was in line with other bids we received, originally $35,000, increasing to more than $40,000 by completion.

With the exception of the sod being brown when they completed the job everything else looked okay.  We reluctantly made final payment with Richie’s promise that if the sod did not recover or we were unhappy with anything he would “make it right”. 

More than half of our new Bermuda sod never recovered and rotted in place.  The plants in the flower beds began to die about 6 weeks later and within a another months three of the five trees Richie planted were dead.    After the first heavy rain, we realized our grading was horrible.   And despite Ritchie’s repeated promises to come out and fix the problems, we never saw him again.   

We had to hire a second landscaping and spend over $18,000 to have much of the yard regraded and the dead sod replaced.  They also had to replaced all of the dirt in our flower beds and replant the few plants that had survived and replace the dead ones.  It turns out that Richie had filled our flower beds with a cheap fill dirt and covered it with mulch.  We have also had to make numerous repairs to the sprinkler system to improve coverage and fix leaks.  Painfully, we also lost 3 of our existing 25 year old pine trees to pine bark beetles.  The arborist we hired informed us that the stress of multiple passes of the grading likely stressed them and made them susceptible to the beetles.

Please do not be taken in by his sales pitch or his new website.  It indicates he is a experienced and certified landscaper.  Ask to see certifications, insurance and licenses.  We have searched and have found no certifications or liscenses. 

His web site also indicates he has a well trained experienced crew.  He delayed our job by almost a month until we were in the middle of moving as he did not a crew to start the job.  Once started he had trouble staffing our job with 3 or 4 workers and the ones we spoke with had little or no experience working for him or anyone else.   He also had no equipment other than mowers.  He had to rent everything else required for the job, which may have been why he did not take the time to do the job correctly.

You may also want to ask for a copy of his driver's liscense.  To date, we have tracked down 6 addresses for him but none appear to be legitimate.   The address on his business cards and his website is actually a Mail Boxes N More location, not a landscaping company.  We have been unable to locate an address where we could even have him served.  So like us, you will have little recourse if his work does not meet his promises.  It appears he has changed the name of his company 3 times in the past 6 or 7 years....not generally indicative of a company with an excellent reputation.

We received Ritchie's name from a reputable pool company and trusted they were familiar with his work and had vetted him.   It turns out they had just been taken in by his sales pitch and his enthusiasm.  That was a very costly mistake on our part. 

If you want to see some videos the work he did for us you can search for LOUGEE on YouTube.