Hall Of Fame Inductees

 

The individuals nominated should have made a significant impact or positive influence that assures the future of our industry in the lives of generations to come.

 

Once nominated, an individual’s biography and photo are updated on the site, and he or she is placed in the polls for voting. At the end of the year the committee takes into consideration the votes and decides which candidates are inducted.

 

Those with a star (*) next to their name below were either inducted posthumously or have passed away since being inducted.

 

Nomination Qualifications

  • Person with integrity and passion
  • Minimum 20 years in industry
  • Someone who has developed  or invented  new technology
  • Has made contributions that resulted in change
  • Contributed to mankind’s needs in his field
  • Provided education and encouragement  with self-sacrifice
  • Changed the industry

Marty McPhee

Park West, Inc.

 

Marty McPhee began his career in the green industry as a New York teenager, mowing lawns in his hometown of Massapequa on Long Island. After graduating from S.U.N.Y. Farmingdale in 1974 with an A.A.S. degree in Ornamental Horticulture, he and a classmate started a landscape construction business called Tranquility Base. In 1978, McPhee sold his half of the business and moved to California where the climate was more conducive to working in landscape year-round.  He enrolled at Cal Poly Pomona in the B.S. Horticulture program, wishing to further his education and become knowledgeable in the local landscape practices and plant palette. While attending Cal Poly, McPhee was introduced to Mort Herrmann of Industrial Turf, a large commercial landscape contractor in El Toro where McPhee was hired in 1980. Mort got his firm involved with CLASS (California Landscape Architectural Student Scholarship) Fund and CLIC (California Landscape and Irrigation Council), along with firms like Carlacio Landscape, American Landscape, California Landscape and many others to establish an annual golf tournament. Around that time, Bob Cardoza (Cardoza / DiLallo Landscape Architects) challenged McPhee to get involved on the CLASS Fund Business Committee. This was when McPhee, along with Andy Bowden from Land Concern, started assisting Klaus Ahlers (Carlacio) with the golf tournament, all with the goal of raising money for student scholarships.

 

 

After leaving Industrial Turf (which had morphed into Pacific States Landscape), McPhee spent five years with Southern Counties Landscape before ultimately joining Park West Landscape. In 1996, Bart Ryder convinced McPhee that Park West was the place to be. Twenty-five years later, McPhee is Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Park West, one of the largest landscape construction firms in the United States. His role in sales and marketing is a result of a lifetime of nurturing relationships within the construction and landscape industry. He has been involved in some of the most notable commercial and residential landscape projects in California, designed by some of the most iconic firms in the landscape architecture profession in the West.

 

A lifelong horticulturist, McPhee has been planting landscapes since 1972 and has been a California licensed landscape contractor since 1982. As the current Chairman of the Board of the CLASS Fund, McPhee has helped shepherd the accumulation of over $1,500,000 in the endowment fund that will award scholarships in perpetuity to the Cal Poly and UC Landscape Architecture and Plant/Irrigation Science programs, as well as environmental research grants on a national level. McPhee has also volunteered several years on the UCLA Extension Guidance Committee under Department Chair Stephanie Landregan, adding a contractor’s point of view to shaping the curriculum of the UCLA Extension Landscape Architecture Program. In addition, through the early encouragement of Vicki Phillipy, Executive Director of the Southern California Chapter of ASLA, McPhee has been involved twice on the panel of judges of the ASLA Design Awards and has presented a landscape seminar for the student chapter of ASLA.

 

For fun, McPhee enjoys watching football and making home-fired pizza with his wife of 41 years Jeane and their family; daughters and sons-in-law, Kaely and Justin and Coral and Marlon and their three sons Hudson, Graham and West. Along with teaching his grandsons about fishing and gardening, McPhee has the boys working on home landscape projects like planting tomatoes and spreading mulch. He also enjoys being the leadman and playing harmonica in an almost famous Southern California roots and blues band called Suitcase Johnnie.