Bonny,

At first I thought that, well, the crew had to do their work and the gardens being there, well...

Yet, as I look at the photos more and more, I start getting as angry and as sad as you. They could have climbed on the roof from another vantage point and placed their materials up there from another vantage point too. There's simply no excuse for the damage they've done. I can understand a stem of a plant or two coming down because someone accidentally dropped something, but it looks like they used the gardens as an area to walk and stand on during their break or something.

No, there's no excuse for the amount of damage.

... they should compensate (with $$$) so you can buy new plants to replace the ones they damage - it's as simple as that - or pay them minus the damages.

What a shame - that was a rude group of guys

Carrie

Bleeding hearts should be fine. Are those violets? They will certainly be fine.

ohhhhh bonnie, i'm so sorry!! i certainly do understand!!! i'm Very sentimental, no amount of money could ever pay for their rudeness!! that was just wrong of them!! (not to mention i just don't like contractors to begin with!! LOL) my heart breaks for you!! i do hope they recover quickly!! many hugs ~medo way to go b's hubby!!!! :'))

OMG! I can only imagine what you were/are feeling :((((

I have hopes that a lot of that will fill back in once it's cleaned up, but I do agree that they should be compensating you because that all could have been avoided.

Vera

I think I'd make them eat every last piece of any plant they busted down!

It is so sad that you lose that lovely vista this year. From experience - this year's being a landscape crew that hacked nearly everything down in its path to make my yard look "neat" for sale - nearly all of what you have there will come back. My baptisia australis, which was cut down to the ground and covered with mulch, re-emerged, grew 4 1/2 feet tall and bloomed profusely. If you take it up with them, they will probably look at you with those blank "What's the big deal?" looks. All you can do is cry, sigh, clean up the debris, and repeat the mantra I grew up with in Red Sox nation (not applicable for the past couple of years): There's always next year.

My sympathies are with you.

OMG, I feel for you hun.

I had a similar experience a couple weeks ago. I just finished making one of my front beds and just planted all my wintersown and nursery purchased plants and I came home to a bunch of shingles on them!!!

I was getting a discount because my cousin and his father were doing my roof, so I really could not do much, but I did warn them, and I told them if I saw any more shingles on my beds, that I was taking the cost of my flowers off the final payment.

From what I understand, that is normal practice, if they ruin anything in your yard or around your house, that they are to pay for it. If you had hired professionals to do the work, I would fo sure be taking money off for each plant.

I nursed a lot of mine back that I received in trades, but only because they were bigger than the ones that I had started. But they ruin at least a few different plants that I was unable to save that i purchased from the nursery.

I hope your babies that you are not able to nurse back this season, come back full force for you next year.

I would be hopping mad if my garden turned up like that!
I hope the perennials will come back for you.

Before I signed a contract, I asked the owner of the roofing company to protect my plants before the crew started the work. The crew placed sheet boards against the house over my entire flower bed. There was hardly any damage at all to my garden.

Roofing jobs are a gardeners nightmare - They are always moving ladders through beds, stacking shingles, throwing shingles down, etc. and always moving quickly (not carefully) it seems to me. When we needed a new roof a couple of years ago, I made sure we did it in very early spring before much had emerged and made sure the hubby had a long chat about with the roofer about how furious the wife would be if plants were hurt..

As others have said, the garden will bounce back. But everyone here understands your rage!

I am saddened by the loss of your beautiful blossoms. What a shock to see the damage.

The roofers that replaced our roof last time did not do any damage to the flower beds. Hope I can say the same when our hail damaged roof is replaced this summer. The one bed that has been full and blooming is the one on the side of the house protected from the hail. Hope I do not have the same experience.

Bonnie,
So sad about some of your plants getting trampled on. Nice comment from your hubby, though...that put 'em straight.
I know roofers like to just chuck things off on to the ground willy-nilly, but hey, they should understand that you don't want your whole garden trashed just because they're putting on a new roof.
My front bed still hasn't really recovered from when contractors put in our water line. A combination of the bad top soil they put in and them just digging mercilessly.

Here's to your plants having a quick recovery!
(love that pixie/fairy in that one bed...she's beautiful:-)

Linda

for this very same reason all jobs around the house have to be done either either very early spring or late fall- learned that lesson same hard way. Yes, those plants are nothing for most crews and they are treasure to us. So sorry for your loss of beautiful flowers, hopefully damage is only temporary,I would fertilize them well and keep watering.

Thank you everyone for your kind words and good words of hope for my garden. I know the perenials will come back. A lot of my 2nd year wintersowing was in this garden as well as comeback annuals that were also wintersown...doubt those will come back. The worst part about this whole mess is we didn't have a shingle roof put on, it's a metal roof and they didn't have to remove anything from the roof (big part of the reason we went with metal was to avoid the damage the old shingles would do to the gardens). If they had just used a 10ft longer ladder and stayed two steps out they wouldn't have hurt a thing. I wanted to do the roof last fall but we were put on a waiting list and this was when they were available to do ours. There really is no excuse for the damage.
mnwsgal...I hope your experinece is much better than mine...
linda...I read about your waterline replacement nightmare, that is terrible and I'm sorry for the bad topsoil...I know how hard it is to improve that.
They are almost done with the roof and I am keeping my fingers crossed that the rest will be less traumatic to my garden. Thanks again for the kind words.
Bonny

So sorry about your stupid roofers!!
Don't they realize that bad news travels futher and faster than good news??
The best advertising comes from satisfied customers. Your pictures speak a thousand curse words.
-B

I want to crawl through the computer and make them compensate you for the damages! That is so rude, especially after it was already discussed that caution should be used around the planting areas.

We recently had gutters and downspouts installed at our house and forturnately had no damage. One of the installers is an avid gardener, so he made sure nothing was damaged. It also helped that we were able to be home during the installation as well.

I think you should most certianly deduct the amount of the damages from their payment with a note detailing the reason for the lower amount.

I hope that your gardens recover soon, I'm sure that your TLC will have them wanting to stretch to the skies for you!

Diana