Dowson Design

We had a wonderful experience having Dowson Design create our new backyard. Donna was so creative, listened to our ideas, and incorporated them into a beautiful landscape. Anytime we had questions she was very responsive and followed through with our requests. When we pointed out work we wanted the contractors to do, she contacted them immediately and followed through with our messages.
We are so pleased with the results and have gotten much praise from our friends and neighbors. Donna’s knowledge of plants and designs and details for pergolas, waterfalls, fire pits, artificial turf, and the beautiful slate patio have made our garden a feast for the eyes. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Dowson Designs to anyone wanting a first class garden.
Bev K.

While we were happy with the initial design that Donna did, the execution of the project management was a great disappointment.
Initially we were impressed by Donna’s follow through but as time progressed her communication dwindled to where we had to hound her for status updates. Eventually her communication dropped off completely and was non existent. We had to take on managing the project ourselves because she wasn’t reliable for doing the work that we had hired her to do.
Donna was on vacation for two of the major contractor work periods, each over a week long, and didn’t let us know that she wouldn’t be present for these parts of the project management until the day before the work started. Both of the start dates were known for more than a month in advance with many reminders sent by us. These were critical project management timelines including building the expanded front porch and installing 1700 square feet of new pavers that would impact every other design feature down the line.
It often felt like she cared more about what her recommended contractor wanted instead of what was best for the clients that had hired her. An example was when Donna sided with her recommended landscape contractor that we should use thin bricks for our front porch expansion despite our repeated desire to have full bricks used to match our 1936 full brick home in the McKinley Park neighborhood.
We had many great contractors on this project, ones that we will be proud to recommend to others. Sadly, Donna is not on that list.