Elf's has been working the Seacoast since 1982 — landscaping, irrigation, hardscaping, lighting, property maintenance, snow and ice removal, plus a garden center people visit for plants. The company is family-owned, reports 40 years in business, and has additional locations in Portsmouth and Meredith, New Hampshire and Wells, Maine. Lennie Foss is listed as president, and the Better Business Bureau gives it an A+ on a non-accredited file.
The garden center draws the warmest words. Customers in 2022 described plants arriving in great condition with staff explaining how to care for them, prices they called reasonable, and a shop worth browsing.
On the contracting side, the accounts split. A July 2023 customer who had phoned several landscapers — some of whom took deposits and then never showed — said Elf's called back and actually turned up. An August 2024 customer praised the work, the communication and the crew.
Unreturned calls run through the complaints, across nine years. A February 2023 customer said they called four times over two months about two projects, left voicemails, spoke to a representative, and heard nothing back. A July 2026 customer who had an irrigation system installed, loam brought in and a lawn hose-seeded in late fall 2025 said two emails and several phone calls asking them to hold the hydroseed until spring, the growing season being over, went unanswered. A 2017 Houzz reviewer said the loam and hydro-seeding over a new septic area came out well and the grass returned, but that follow-up after a sinkhole opened in that area went unanswered.
One more, from March 2026: a plowing customer said the morning's plow buried the car he had shovelled out before work.
Google shows 4.0 stars across 56 ratings.
For plants, garden-center advice and routine landscape maintenance around Rochester, this is a long-established local choice with a real nursery behind it. If you are hiring them for an installation — irrigation, loam and seed, a hardscape — agree the schedule and a named contact in writing before work starts, and put any change of timing in an email you can point back to.
