It was 1985 when Gerhard Steudel took over as director of Landscaping at Loma Linda University Health. He recently announced his upcoming retirement and thanked LLUH officials for his time of service.
“I think I have had one of the best jobs here. Our department’s motto is, ‘We create the first impression,’” he said in an interview. “We get lots of compliments.”
Steudel and his team of 20 landscapers have worked to create a strong first impression, regularly mowing of 22 acres of lawns, trimming trees and shrubs, and planting and maintaining a variety of flowers throughout LLUH’s main campus. The team also creates the popular flower montages for commencement weekends, an arrangement Steudel started in 1980 after getting the idea from a Rose Parade float.
Steudel says his team’s work on campus grounds aren’t just for optics but to help patients and students.
“I think we’ve been able to make the campus an extension of the healing and learning environment,” he said. “I want people to come here and be happy.”
The team recycles all of its green waste—approximately 185 tons a year. It’s ground down and used for mulch around campus.
“We haven’t sent any green waste to the landfill since 1988,” he says.
A Cal Poly graduate with a bachelor’s degree in horticulture and a minor in business, Steudel first started working at LLUH in 1968 in the Campus Engineering Department. There he washed vehicles and would periodically crawl through the main campus utility tunnels to replace lightbulbs. He began working in the Landscaping Department in 1978.
The campus has changed a lot since he started working here. He remembers more open spaces, fewer parking structures, a farm between what is now Loma Linda Academy and the main campus, and orange groves where East Campus Hospital now stands and near the location of the current Behavioral Medicine Center.
His first major project was developing landscaping for the Drayson Center, which opened in 1995. He was told the budget would be small due to the 1994 economic slowdown. A few days later he was driving in Orange County and noticed a golf course that was being closed and its grounds torn up. By paying for hauling charges, LLUH was able to secure free cuts of sod for the Drayson Center Super Field and other parts of the LLUH main campus. He also developed the landscaping around Centennial Complex when it opened in 2009.
Steudel also boasts of the registered varieties of roses throughout campus. A rose grower in Northern California donated the roses for the LLUH mission globe.
Steudel will retire in April and plans to move to Tennessee.
“I have loved this job. I got to be out in nature, and I still feel so healthy because of it,” Steudel said.
“I love Loma Linda. I got to help keep the place looking nice.”
