M J Nicholls

One homeowner says he has used Matt Nicholls for more than 25 years — back when Matt was still at Norfolk Aggie and the work was lawn maintenance — and it grew into all the landscaping around his pool and cabana. That account, written in a March 2026 review, tracks the company's own story: MJ Nicholls works out of Braintree as a full-service landscape care, construction and fencing company across the South Shore, and its site dates the business back more than two decades. The hardscape jobs are what customers describe in the most detail. A June 2026 review covers a new patio with the backyard landscaped around it, priced in a way the homeowner called fair and transparent from the start. In a May 2026 review, old overgrown bushes came out of a front yard with Dig Safe coordination and the place was left looking good. From 2025: a granite step installation alongside spring cleanup and mulching, a cobblestone border set around a redesigned garden that worked in the owners' favorite plants, and a May 2025 account of a lawn renovation done the previous fall — the back yard excavated, new loam brought in, graded and sodded, finished in two days at a competitive quote. In December 2025, a caller had the plow pile at the end of the driveway cleared within minutes. The complaints run in two directions and both are worth raising before you sign. On the work itself, a March 2024 customer says hydroseeding went in over poor topsoil and over-packed ground and came up mud instead of grass, and a September 2024 customer who was impressed with the first season of mowing says the second was done in a rush and looked it. On reaching the company afterward: an April 2024 customer got no reply about a minor repair despite repeated calls and voicemails, an April 2023 customer says a promised return visit never happened, a June 2023 customer says his routine maintenance contract was ended without a call after another company won a hardscape bid, and a March 2026 customer of over 20 years was turned down for a sprinkler turn-on by the front office. One more thing to know: Violation Tracker, which compiles enforcement records, lists a $34,513 penalty against M J Nicholls Landscaping LLC in 2020 for a wage and hour violation under the Fair Labor Standards Act. For a designed yard — patio, steps, drainage, new lawn — this is a crew plenty of South Shore homeowners have kept using for a decade or more, and the before-and-during communication draws steady praise. Put the schedule and your point of contact in writing, and settle up front how callbacks and small repairs after the job are handled, because that is where the unhappy customers ended up.