Sunday Lawn Care: Tested and Reviewed 2024 - USA TODAY
If you want a hands-on approach to lawn care, Sunday Lawn Care delivers through its customized subscription service. However, Sunday's products require consistent application and effort for the best results.
Based on my experience testing the products and our full methodology review, we recommend Sunday as our top subscription lawn care company. Sunday analyzes your property via satellite imaging, asks questions about your lawn and sends tailored items that best suit your needs.
Our thoughts on Sunday Lawn Care
We gave Sunday Lawn Care a rating of 4.9 out of 5 stars per our review standards for subscription lawn care. It scored full points in nearly every subcategory due to its robust plan offerings and flexible payment structure.
Sunday dropped a few points in our a la carte pricing subcategories because of its high prices for seed and pest control products.
After scoring Sunday against our in-depth rating system, we added it to our list of the best lawn care companies.
What we like
Sunday Lawn Care provides every lawn care product you need to manage your lawn health. Through its lawn care quiz, Sunday can create a custom plan with products that fulfill your lawn's specific needs.
Sunday designed its lawn care products for ease of use. The company sends most of the additional attachments and tools you need to apply the products to your lawn. Each product has setup and application instructions printed on the back. In addition, Sunday has a detailed product instructions library online for all its lawn care products.
I found the setup process straightforward for Sunday's liquid fertilizer and herbicide products with their required attachments. Application was also easy — its fertilizer products have a garden hose attachment. You twist open the attachment valve, and it sprays the correct amount of fertilizer without any premixing.
Sunday also includes a soil test kit to send a sample of your lawn's soil for analysis. The kit has a coring tool, a sample bag to store your soil, and a shipping box and label to send your sample. According to Sunday, the analysis takes three to four weeks to complete. Sunday will then send you products that fulfill any nutrient deficiencies your lawn's soil may have.
What we don't like
Third-party customer reviews for Sunday are practically nonexistent. We found one review on the Better Business Bureau (BBB) and three on Trustpilot; three of the four reviews were negative. Sunday does have a much higher customer rating on its website. However, our rating methodology involves reviewing customer ratings outside a brand's website for transparency.
Through my testing, I also found that some of Sunday's products — Dandelion Doom weed control in particular — take a while to apply. In addition, setting up the herbicide's included electric sprayer involves loosening screws located on its side, which requires separate tools and may not be user-friendly for some.
Sunday doesn't include specialty lawn care tools needed for certain applications. For example, Sunday's fescue grass seed bag that's included in the subscription box requires a rotary or drop spreader — which Sunday sells separately — for proper seeding and overseeding application.
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The table below compares key factors for top lawn care companies.
Sunday Lawn Care plans and products
Before diving into my testing, let's review Sunday Lawn Care's general subscription plans. It provides custom lawn and pest control plans, each with an established schedule of deliveries and applications. The subscription box Sunday sent me only pertains to lawn care. According to Sunday's representative, its pest control subscriptions have different treatments and application procedures.
Subscription plans
Sunday provides four lawn care and three pest control subscription plans. Each subscription type has its own quiz to determine which products Sunday sends.
Lawn care plans
Sunday's online tool finds your address and prompts a lawn care quiz before listing its custom plans. I used my personal address in Keyes, California, and filled out the lawn quiz based on my lawn care needs. Sunday also includes a free soil test kit with each plan. In addition, the company sends product shipments in intervals depending on the payment structure you select.
After submitting my answers, Sunday generated the following plans:
- Basic Care: The Basic Care plan includes eight fertilizer pouches.
- Keep and Protect: The Keep and Protect plan includes eight fertilizer pouches and two selective weed control products.
- Grow and Renew: The Grow and Renew plan lists every item in the Keep and Protect plan and adds two grass seed bags.
- Lawn and Paws: The Lawn and Paws plan includes the Grow and Renew products, a pet spot treatment product and two pet urine-resistant grass seed bags.
Pest control plans
Sunday requires you to enter an address and complete a pest quiz before providing information on a pest plan. Depending on your quiz answers, Sunday gives a general or a targeted pest subscription. Note that certain pest control products aren't available in all states due to pesticide regulations.
Here is an overview of each pest plan Sunday offers based on my home address and quiz answers:
- Total Home Pest Protection Plan — Small: This plan includes one shipment of Sunday's Bug Doom barrier spray and indoor spray.
- Total Home Pest Protection Plan — Medium: This plan adds a unit of barrier spray to the small plan.
- Total Home Pest Protection Plan — Large: This plan includes three barrier sprays, one indoor spray and two Ant Adios insect bait units.
Products
Sunday provides over 50 a la carte lawn care and pest control products. Sunday also offers several lawn care services as a la carte products. Below is an overview of Sunday's a la carte products and lawn care services:
- Fertilizer nutrient pouches
- Gardening products and tools
- Grass seeds
- Live plants and trees
- Pest control pesticides and baits
- Seasonal lawn care services (fertilizer lawn treatment, weed control, etc.)
- Smart lawn tools (battery-powered hose timers, etc.)
- Weed control herbicide
Product guarantee
Sunday provides two product guarantees: one for its subscription and a la carte products and another for its live plants and trees. Sunday's website has little information on what its product guarantee entails for lawn care products. It does state that Sunday will work with you to replace products and troubleshoot any issues that arise.
Regarding its live plant and tree product guarantee, Sunday will grant one year of coverage from the original purchase date. If your tree has issues within the warranty period, Sunday will issue a credit, which you can use for other product purchases. Sunday may request a photo of your item's condition before issuing the credit.
Quotes and pricing
Although Sunday Lawn Care didn't charge me for its Grow and Renew plan, I resubmitted my address, lawn and pest information to obtain a pricing estimate. Once you enter your address, Sunday calculates your lawn's size via satellite imaging and prices your subscription plans accordingly.
Sunday provides a convenient pay-as-you-go payment structure. You pay an initial $55 to start the subscription, and Sunday charges a flat fee for each new shipment it sends. Sunday also allows you to pay for your subscription in full. If you pay in full, the company will send most of your subscription products in the first shipment.
The table below shows the annual pricing estimate of my 1,216-square-foot, single-family home with a 5,286-square-foot lawn.
| Plan Name | Annual Cost |
|---|---|
| Basic Care | $220 |
| Keep and Protect | $274 |
| Grow and Renew | $336 |
| Lawn and Paws | $356 |
We also pulled the average cost of Sunday's annual lawn care plans from our February 2024 lawn care survey. The overall cost differs due to several factors, such as the respondent's lawn size, condition, geographical location and chosen subscription. The table below highlights the cost data from our survey results.
| Subscription Type | Average Cost |
|---|---|
| Annual subscription plan | $566 |
Testing Sunday's Grow and Renew plan
Sunday Lawn Care allowed me to test its Grow and Renew lawn care subscription for the first year free of charge. Below, I outline my experience, from signing up online to using the lawn care products included in the Grow and Renew subscription over the course of a week.
Sign-up process
To get started with Sunday, enter your address using its address lookup tool. Once Sunday locates your home, it'll prompt you to create a free online account, which is easy and intuitive. Sunday allows you to do a quick sign-up by using a Gmail account or filling out its email and password sign-up form.
Next, Sunday prompts you with a lawn quiz to gauge your lawn care knowledge, issues and how often you spend time on your lawn. Sunday then provides subscription options and a prediction of your lawn's soil quality.
From here, you can choose your lawn subscription plan and check out. Sunday provided me with a checkout code that discounted the entire price of its Grow and Renew plan, though I still needed to enter my credit card information to confirm my subscription. After confirming, Sunday processes your order and ships the first subscription box.
Receiving the first subscription box
According to Sunday's welcome email I received after finalizing my subscription, the first subscription box typically ships within several business days. I ordered my subscription box on a Wednesday afternoon and received it the following Monday morning. Sunday provides tracking information via email once the subscription box ships.
Sunday also provides a detailed treatment checklist accessible via your online account that outlines what products to apply and when. The treatment schedule also includes information on contacting Sunday's Yard Advisors if you have questions about setting up or applying products.
To access this treatment schedule, log into your account and select "My Plan" under your username icon.
Grow and Renew product setup
Sunday sent me all the items in its Grow and Renew plan, which includes the following:
- One "Start Here" box (which houses its soil test kit and two lawn fertilizer hose attachments)
- Two Active Lawn nutrient pouches
- Two Dandelion Doom Concentrate herbicide bottles
- One 1-gallon weed control pouch with attached hose ends
- One battery-powered electric sprayer
- Two Fescue Rescue 5-pound grass seed bags
Overall, the setup was simple. All Sunday lawn care products have instructions on the back of their containers explaining how to set them up correctly. Although none of the products were particularly challenging to set up, the electric sprayer took the longest. It required slightly loosening the sprayer's battery cover and removing a white tab on the bottom.
Setting up the included hose attachments that connect to Sunday's fertilizer pouches was a breeze. The attachment has two hose ends — one on its base and another on one end. It has a collecting tube that goes into the fertilizer pouch, which is how it premixes with the water from your garden hose.
The hose end on the base of the attachment hooks onto the fertilizer pouch, and the other connects to your water hose. In addition, both hose attachments and the herbicide sprayer and pouch are reusable, meaning you can use them for more than one application.
Collecting a soil sample
As mentioned above, Sunday provides a soil test kit within the first subscription box. The soil test kit contains a soil coring tool, a paper bag to store your lawn's soil, a flattened cardboard box to ship the soil in and a prepaid shipping label.
At first, I couldn't find the shipping box and label within my subscription box. After watching Sunday's soil sampling tutorial, I recognized that the flattened cardboard in the "Start Here" box was the soil test's shipping container. Instructions or clear labeling would've helped in locating these items.
Sunday requires you to collect at least three soil samples from different areas of your lawn. Collecting a soil sample is straightforward; all you need is the provided soil coring tool and paper bag, as well as a container to mix the different soil samples. A small planting pot or plastic container works well.
To collect a soil sample, hold the coring tool's green handle, press it down against your lawn at an angle and twist it back and forth until you bury the tool completely. Next, repeat the same twisting motion as you pull the coring tool up and away from the lawn. If done correctly, the coring tool will have a log of soil within itself.
Press down on the metal tab at the top to release the soil sample from the coring tool. This will open the coring tool like a mouth, allowing you to drop the soil sample into your container.
Once you've collected all three soil samples, mix the soil using the coring tool. Per Sunday's instructions, I removed excess roots, grass clumps and sediment from my soil sample. Finally, I dumped the soil into the test kit's paper bag, sealed it and packed it into the test kit's shipping box to send it off.
Sunday states that it will process your soil sample through its laboratory within three to four weeks of receiving it. Once analyzed, Sunday will adjust your smart lawn plan based on any nutrient deficiencies it finds.
Grow and Renew product testing
I tested all of the products Sunday sent me except for the Fescue Rescue grass seed. The grass seed requires a rotary or drop spreader to apply it to your lawn correctly, and I don't have one.
According to a Sunday representative I spoke with, you can apply Dandelion Doom herbicide and Active Lawn fertilizer within 24 hours of each other.
For my initial testing, I used Sunday's Dandelion Doom and Active Lawn alongside their necessary attachments on my front lawn, which had many weeds. I first started with the Dandelion Doom and applied the Active Lawn nutrients after 48 hours.
Dandelion Doom
Setting up the herbicide was simple, like every other setup. Sunday provides clear instructions on the herbicide concentrate bottles and the plastic pouch where you mix water and the herbicide. Instructions call to fill the pouch with 1 gallon of water and add a 5-ounce bottle of the Dandelion Doom.
The pouch has two hose ends, one for filling up water and herbicide and another for attaching Sunday's included battery-powered sprayer. I filled the pouch with a gallon of water, added the herbicide, closed the "fill" hose end and attached the sprayer.
I gently shook the pouch to mix the water and herbicide. Once mixed, I went to my front lawn and began spraying. The sprayer has a white locking tab on top of the large yellow tab that prevents the sprayer from accidentally spraying. To unlock the sprayer, push the white tab up.
You can begin spraying by holding down on the large yellow tab. The sprayer tip's default setting sprayed very little herbicide out, so I adjusted the sprayer tip by twisting it left and right until I found my preferred spray setting.
The process of spraying my lawn was fairly tedious since the sprayer is limited in how much herbicide it can release at a time. Additionally, my hand got fatigued since I had to hold down the yellow tab to spray constantly. It took me roughly one hour to set up and treat my front yard.
Active Lawn
Setting up the Active Lawn nutrient pouches required fewer steps than the Dandelion Doom herbicide. I connected Sunday's hose attachment to the nutrient pouch and my garden hose.
On the left side of the hose attachment, there is a white circular valve that twists open to release water and premixed fertilizer. To close the valve, simply twist it in the opposite direction. I found that the fertilizer was much quicker to apply because the hose attachment sprays a large amount of water. It took me 10 minutes to set up and treat my front lawn with Active Lawn.
Customer thoughts
Sunday Lawn Care has an A+ rating and a customer rating of 1.0 out of 5 stars on BBB. However, the company has one customer review on the site, which may not accurately reflect the company's reputation.
Sunday also lacks customer ratings from other third-party review sites, such as Trustpilot. Of the few customer ratings we found on these sites, most were negative. For example, this Trustpilot review from Katie M. highlighted her discontent with Sunday's renewal policy and lawn products, specifically stating that the products were ineffective.
To verify these customer sentiments, we asked about Sunday's product effectiveness and quality in our February 2024 survey of 1,000 homeowners who purchased services or subscriptions from a lawn care company. Of the 21 respondents who reported buying Sunday products, 81% stated they were completely satisfied with their effectiveness in treating their lawns. In addition, all 21 respondents reported that the quality of Sunday's products was at least an 8 out of 10.
Sunday Lawn Care's cancellation and refund policy
Sunday Lawn Care accepts subscription cancellations at any time during the annual subscription period. To cancel, you must log into your account online and follow the on-screen prompts. However, canceling your subscription will just stop new products from being shipped to your door.
Sunday will automatically renew your subscription at the end of the year and start a new shipment schedule. You must cont...
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