Nolasco Landscaping and Construction

Six Google ratings, four years, one star every time. Nolasco Landscaping and Construction is a hardscape-leaning landscaping outfit working out of 50 Cedar Street in Marblehead, listed as a member of the Marblehead Chamber of Commerce. Angi and HomeAdvisor describe the work as brick, stone and block wall repair, asphalt paving, tree stump removal and interlocking paver driveways, run by an owner customers call Rene, with six years of experience and Spanish spoken — the company's own account of itself. The complaints are the reason to slow down, and they rhyme. The most recent, posted in May 2026, says the work was not good, the company went unresponsive when contacted to fix it, and calls the three-month guarantee a lie. A homeowner writing in September 2025 said he promised to come back and resolve issues, rarely answered the phone or texts, promised again when he did, and eventually ghosted them. The older accounts carry the detail. In a March 2024 review a customer said Rene left the stumps in the ground, never loamed or cleaned the areas he excavated, damaged property, left the yard in shambles on a $3,000 job, stopped returning calls, and that repairing the mess would cost thousands. In May 2023 another described a yard clean-up in which a fire pit was hauled off without being asked and two large clay pots were broken; the promised make-good work never came, and the loam levelling amounted to filling a few holes and throwing down grass seed. The oldest, from May 2022, is shorter and blunter: an awful job, rude and unprofessional. Angi and HomeAdvisor tell a milder story — 3.5 stars apiece — but those two pages are mirrors of one another publishing the same three reviews, not six, and two of the three are one-line March 2023 positives, one written in Spanish calling the owner attentive and responsible. The third is the same March 2024 complaint that also appears on Google. One customer, two platforms. What runs through four years and three platforms is not the finished hardscape but what happens after the crew leaves: scope left undone, damage on site, and an owner who stops answering. If you are still considering them, get the full scope and the guarantee in writing before any money moves, hold back a meaningful share of the price until stump removal, loam and site cleanup are signed off, and ask to speak with customers from the last twelve months.