Steven Vandora – The Winning Landscape Approach

Steven Vandora is the award-winning contractor and landscape designer who has been quietly reshaping and planting Southern California and beyond for over a quarter century. He’s one of those under-the-radar guys who has a client list that includes most of the famous one-word household names we all know, as well as the heads of the conglomerate companies the employees said names.

Born and raised in Savannah, America’s first planned city or, as John Berendt, author of “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” says, “Savannah is the most home-conscious city in America.” Steven developed early on an innate sense of place, propriety and proportion in relation to the people who are in and use gardens, both public and private.

He began his early career in Savannah as an assistant movie set designer and was quickly hired by a production company who knew talent when they saw it.

He then started a small and simple houseplant maintenance company in 1982 at the behest of Marty Baum, a legendary man also known for spotting talent. Shortly after realizing that only about 32 plants grew indoors, it was time to broaden his palette and start tilling the soil, and subsequently enroll in UCLA’s Landscape Architecture program. Here he traveled abroad and experienced an epiphany at Blenheim Palace in England and especially at Vaux Le Vicomte in France of what man was capable of creating. The harmonies of light, smell, sound, color, texture, and life could all basically be enriched and given over to noble inspirations, whether in a palace in Europe or on a small balcony in Beverly Hills.

Says Steven Vandora: In 17th century France, with chaos reigning outside the palace walls, you have Descartes and the age of reason and you see the need for order that Le Notre expressed using the science of mathematics reflected in the well-ordered and clipped rhythm. flower beds in Vaux then in the 18th century you have – ‘the best ever called’ Capability Brown who said no it’s not about that it’s about nature and he ripped up all the flower beds and put out a lake and a lawn with sheep roaming around right up to the front door and said, this – this is what we’re doing.

Combining both schools of thought for over 25 years, winning walls of awards, saying no to TV fame deals, he has been repurposing and realizing his vision and that of his chosen clients for the big properties and some world-class hotels. as well as unique properties throughout the Southern California terrain.