Steve Harbour

Steve Harbour Biography

“I want people to walk into the yards and feel like they are looking at a photo from Sunset Magazine or Pacific Horticulture.  That’s my goal – it doesn’t matter if it is a large or small budget job.”

When Steve Harbour meets landscape clients in the San Diego area, he brings over 30 years professional experience in landscape design and horticulture to the table.  Beginning in 1978 as a student at Sonoma State University, he began working part-time for a local wholesale nursery. “I enrolled to get a B.A. in English with a minor in writing, but gardening and plant collecting consumed my leisure hours.   I literally learned this business from the ground up, starting with mixing soil, planting plants, and driving a delivery truck.”

Steve returned to Southern California after graduation and moved to San Diego, where he took a job as manager of a retail garden center. Garden design became a byproduct of helping customers.   He remembers, “Half my customers had a napkin sketch and a photo of their backyard.  We would develop an entire landscape plan right there at the nursery.”

The move to full-time landscape designer occurred when Steve reenrolled in college to study landscape design, then got an offer to work in the fledgling design-build department of Anderson’s La Costa Nursery.  “It was a great learning experience,”  he says.  “The jobs weren’t necessarily large, but I designed close to one hundred landscapes a year.”   The small department grew until three designers and several installation crews worked full-time to handle customer interest.

Steve moved across town to Bradley Landscape Development in 2001, a highly regarded landscape design-build firm.  “I immediately went from the minor to major leagues” he relates.  “When I arrived at Bradley, the company was installing a landscape job that is quite possibly the largest, most complex residential landscape ever completed in San Diego County.  It literally took two years to install!” 

Today, Steve still works with  Bradley as a senior landscape designer and project manager, planning and overseeing the installation of many notable landscapes, having garnered a wealth of design accolations and awards as a result.  “I truly consider myself fortunate.  We are still going strong even with the downturn in the economy, a result of being flexible enough to accomodate projects both large and small.  Bradley allows me to work with any budget and the quality of the finished product is always unsurpassed.”

In his downtime, Steve is an avid gardener and cares for his one-half acre home landscape in Alpine.  The property has several hundred species of plants, including a large cactus and succulent garden, a fruit and vegetable garden, and several separate themed garden rooms which include dozens of California natives mixed with hundreds of other plant species.  “My home is located where chaparral and oak woodland meet,” he says.  “Even though the property was bare dirt when I moved in, the native species have simply planted themselves. I leave them to grow whenever I can.”

His own landscape has been featured on home and garden tours and is designated as a certified wildlife habitat.  Steve also enjoys writing, reading, and nature photography.  In addition to collecting plants, he collects California Plein Air paintings.  For physical recreation, Steve can be found hiking, mountain biking, or kayaking and offers this last piece of advice,  “Regular visits to our San Diego County backcountry and beaches are a terrific way of reinvigorating the senses and finding inspiration for garden design. It resets the clock.”

To discuss a potential landscape project, please call Steve Harbour at 619-320-6532 or 619-922-9735.

Communities served and by zip codes served: North San Diego County, including Carlsbad, Oceanside, Encinitas, Solana Beach, Pacific Beach, Escondido, San Marcos, Vista, Del Mar, La Costa, Cardiff by the Sea, Rancho Santa Fe, and the greater San Diego California area -by zip codes: 91901, 91902, 91910, 91911, 91913, 91914, 91915, 91932, 91941, 91942, 91945, 91948, 91950, 91962, 91977, 91978, 92007, 92008, 92009, 92014, 92019, 92020, 92021, 92024, 92025, 92026, 92027, 92028, 92029, 92037, 92040, 92054, 92056, 92057, 92064, 92065, 92067, 92069, 92071, 92075, 92078, 92081, 92082, 92083, 92084, 92091, 92093, 92101, 92102, 92103, 92104, 92105, 92106, 92107, 92108, 92109, 92110, 92111, 92113, 92114, 92115, 92116, 92117, 92118, 92119, 92120, 92121, 92122, 92123, 92124, 92126, 92127, 92128, 92129, 92130, 92131, 92139, 92145, 92154, 92155, 92161, 92173.