The Drake Company

The Drake Company works out of 1131 Highland Street in Holliston and does something more specific than most landscapers: sports and golf turf. Its own site lists bunkers, tees, greens crown shaping, infield work and full field construction alongside sod layout, slice seeding, aeration, de-thatching and irrigation — and it takes residential, commercial and public turf work across eastern Massachusetts. On Houzz one of its five ideabooks is titled "heavy turf and athletic construction." The other half is site and landscape construction: walkways, stone walls, patios, lawn renovation, plantings, wetland plantings, drainage, excavation, laser grading, irrigation installation and water features. It also offers standalone project management for homeowners and organisations that need oversight rather than labour. The Better Business Bureau files it as Drake Company, LLC, started 1 January 2013 and incorporated in January 2015, with four employees and Tim Drake as president; it grades the business A+ but the profile is not accredited. On LinkedIn Drake describes himself as owner of "a small landscape construction firm with specialization in turf and horticulture construction in the greater Boston and metro West areas," a role he has held since January 2013. The one thing a homeowner cannot get here is other people's experience. The written record is dated and very thin: a single published comment from February 2018 that reads in full, "GREAT WORK THESE GUYS DO!" Against that sit three project galleries on Houzz totalling twenty-one photographs — a natural turf renovation, a bluestone fire pit and a general construction set — which show the work even if nobody has written about it. Worth a call if you have a field, a lawn that needs rebuilding rather than mowing, or hardscape and drainage work. Because the review record gives you nothing to go on, ask for references on a comparable job and for the licensing and insurance position in writing.