DiCicco Landscape & Irrigation

Four reviews in four years, and they split hard: two long, itemized five-star accounts of heavy hardscape builds, and two one-stars — the more recent from May 2026, about an estimate appointment that never happened. DiCicco Landscape & Irrigation works out of 3 Piedmont Street in Middleton. The company says it was founded in 1997 by Stephen DiCicco, who came out of the golf-course world as an assistant superintendent of construction and holds a turfgrass management degree from UMass Amherst; BBB lists it as a four-person LLC with the same 1997 start date. The work it describes is design-build landscaping plus irrigation — patios and stone walls, plantings and lawns, lighting, pools, water features, and sprinkler systems it installs and services — across Andover, North Andover, North Reading, Reading, Lynnfield and Middleton. The praise that exists is specific, and it is all about stonework. A 2022 customer in Andover listed the job piece by piece: three stone retaining walls, eight granite steps, a paver walkway, a gravel path, a boulder wall, landscape lighting, a new front lawn and irrigation. In 2024, another homeowner who hired the company to plan and build a patio pointed to the attention to detail and the quality of the materials and workmanship. The two complaints are different in kind. The May 2026 one is a scheduling failure — stood up twice, no call the second time, for an estimate. The September 2025 one is not about a job at all: a driver watched garbage and styrofoam blow out of a company dumpster truck on I-93 North and got a rude gesture for flagging it. Two things are worth raising before you call. The site advertises "over 35 years of experience", while the same site says the company was founded in 1997 and BBB puts the business start at 1/1/1997 — a 29-year history, not 35-plus. And the A+ on its BBB page sits on a profile that states plainly the business is not BBB accredited; those are two separate facts, not one endorsement. For a substantial hardscape or irrigation project north of Boston this is a reasonable shortlist name — that is exactly where the detailed praise lives. Just get the estimate appointment confirmed in writing, and ask what the 35-year figure actually counts.