Meet the Owner: Summer Job Turns Career for Landscape Designer

Gary Ievoli says he's a fan of motorcycles and NASCAR. But he's also a big fan of the outdoors, which he says is how he got his start in the landscaping business as a summer job at the age of 16.

Now 47, Ievoli says he still gets a thrill from working in the outdoors, doing things like building ponds and waterfalls and doing plantings for his clients.

"I love landscaping, flowers, trees, plants. That’s how I grew up," he said. "My mother was an avid gardener and we would go to the nursery and buy flowers. Really my mother is the one who got me involved in an early age."

Ievoli is the owner of East Setauket-based AMC Landscaping, which he started in 1995 and moved to his current location on Hulse Road in 2003. AMC Landscaping has clients from Westbury to Wading River, Ievoli said, and also does snow removal in the winter.

He also has a background in diesel mechanics, and for several years he worked both as a foreman for a truck company and as a landscaper.

Ievoli's company has recently done volunteer landscaping work for the Lutz family of East Setauket, who were featured on the TV show "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" in 2010. In an interview with Patch, Kathleen Lutz, who takes care of her six adopted siblings with Down syndrome, said the landscaping work has been extremely helpful to her family.

"This landscaping is a beautiful thing," she said. "I don’t have time to go out and do the lawn with everything I have to do in here."

Ievoli said AMC Landscaping also is trying to become a more environmentally friendly business. He said it has started using organic products for weed control, fertilization, plant disease control, and insect control, including fleas, ticks and mosquitoes. He said they are more frequently recycling the materials they remove from clients' properties, and are testing out alternative fuels for their equipment.

"As a company, we’re looking to not be stuck in the old school way of what we’ve been doing," he said. "We’re looking to change things up."

Before moving to Shoreham, Ievoli and his daughter Jessica, 17, were residents of the Three Village community for 13 years.

"I love the Three Village area," he said. "Doing business, the people are generally very good clients. They’re interested in the community, what it looks like, the neighborhood."