Cole Landscaping & Irrigation Inc

Greg Cole started this company in 1990, and the Better Business Bureau has had it accredited without a break since 1999, at an A+ grade. Thirty-six years, ten employees, a Rowley file address and a working base at 47 Mitchell Rd in Ipswich. The work is design-build rather than mow-and-go: irrigation installs and service, landscape and patio design, hardscaping, landscape lighting, pools and water features, plant health care, plus commercial property maintenance and snow removal. Its Houzz and HomeAdvisor profiles list it as an authorized RainBird, Unilock and Techo Block installer and a Certified CPI Installer, along with a Unilock "most dramatic before and after" award and an Alex Swiniarski Award from the Topsfield fair. Here is the thing to weigh. The written customer history is dated: all ten reviews on file were posted to HomeAdvisor between March 2006 and November 2009. Most are warm. A May 2008 customer wrote that the final costs "matched the estimate to the penny and the work was completed on schedule," naming project manager Tony Foust and several crew members; a November 2008 homeowner described a crew that arrived on time, worked quickly, and showed them how to restart the irrigation system come spring, at a price they called reasonable. Two go the other way. In June 2009 a customer wrote that the company "did not do 3/4 the job" and never returned after promising to, and in March 2008 another described a miscommunication that added $1,500 to the bill, signing off with "Just beware." After that the trail runs through mentions rather than reviews. On Growcycle in November 2023, someone who hired them for garden design and hardscaping in Ipswich called the design beautiful but the project management "a bit delayed," landing on "Overall decent work." A LinkedIn recommendation posted in July 2026 calls Greg Cole "your man for dependability and professionalism." The theme running through both the old complaints and the 2023 note is timing and follow-through, not design. So ask for two or three references from the last year, get a written schedule with milestones, and pin down how change orders are priced before anyone breaks ground. For a whole-yard project on the North Shore — irrigation, lighting, hardscape, planting — this is a long-established outfit with real manufacturer backing behind it. The scheduling terms are what to negotiate hardest.