Chad at Simply Green Lawn & Tree Care in Cedar Rapids, IA spayed our lawn and 2 of our trees mysteriously die. Iowa

 

We hired Simply Green to spray our yard in spring of 2013 with weed control. He came in with a backpack and a hand sprayer and did a nice job. We then hired him again to come spray the fall of 2014. Chad showed up this time with a rider sprayer. A week or so after that, we noticed that one of our small white pines was turning a yellow color. Then it turned a dark orange color and then was dead. We called Chad the owner of Simply Green  to come take a look. By the time he came to look at it,  another of our big white pines was dying on one side too.  This 

one was much bigger than the other but it turned yellow, orange then died too.

Chad came and took some cuttings and pictures of both trees and said he would send them to the Iowa State University for testing.  He told me we should cut the trees down in case it wasn't herbicide related and was a disease  (we cut them both down the next weekend ).  We waited for a couple of weeks and heard nothing back from him. We called and texted many times leaving messages.  Chad finally called me back.  He said he needed more cuttings from the tree and pictures.  Asking this after he told us that we should cut them down.  We have tried and tried to work with him to get this resolved.  He told me the last time he talked to me that he thought it was lack of water that killed our 2 trees.  This is incorrect, it was a very wet spring and not a drought summer.  We feel our trees died because when they sprayed our yard with weed control stuff, the spray got into our trees where we had trimmed them earlier in the fall.

We have since tried to contact him several times and he wont call back or respond.  Trees don't turn yellow and then orange and die as fast as ours did unless something kills them.  We had a neighbor tell us that something similar had happened the prior year and that some trees died with the same reaction and it was due to herbicide overspray. 

All we wanted from Simply Green was to help us pay to replace our white pines.  We know we cant replace the big 12 ft tree but we would have worked with him to get a couple of smaller ones. If he would have just owned up to it and worked with us we would have been loyal, long term customers.  But he is unwilling to help.