Michael Todoran is the founder of nicely, a landscape design studio shaped by more than a decade of experience across planting design, construction documentation, irrigation, residential landscapes, public space, and visual storytelling.

His work is grounded in the belief that a successful landscape has to be beautiful, buildable, and understandable over time. Michael brings a rare combination of design training, field experience, horticultural thinking, technical drawing, photography, and communication to each project. His approach considers how people move through a space, how planting matures, how water is used, how materials come together, and how a garden will be experienced every day.

Michael began his professional life in the United States Coast Guard, serving in heavy-weather search and rescue in Newport, Oregon, followed by aids-to-navigation work in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. During his service, he trained, mentored, and supervised personnel; participated in international training exercises; and received a Coast Guard Certificate of Merit. That experience established the discipline, accountability, and practical problem-solving that continue to inform his work.

He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he developed a foundation in drawing, sculpture, typography, printmaking, exhibition design, and visual communication. He later completed his Master of Landscape Architecture at The Ohio State University’s Knowlton School of Architecture. His graduate work explored public space, community engagement, skateboarding culture, and the relationship between designed landscapes and everyday use.

Before founding nicely, Michael worked as a landscape designer with firms including Harmony Gardens, Stout Design:Build, SWA Group, and RIOS. His project experience spans high-end residential landscapes, urban plazas, planting plans, irrigation systems, water-sensitive design, custom details, paving studies, public-space design, and construction coordination. At SWA Group, his work contributed to projects in Los Angeles, Northern California, Dubai, China, Serbia, and beyond. His portfolio includes planting leadership for La Plaza Cultural Village in Los Angeles, planting and water-conscious site design for Millennium Sunnyvale, technical paving research for Oceanwide Plaza, and skatepark planning and grading studies in Dubai.

Michael also brings extensive experience in the construction side of landscape work. At Stout Design:Build, he worked from initial consultation through construction observation, including site plans, planting plans, lighting plans, irrigation, hydrozones, custom details, field coordination, and client communication. His early work with water-efficient irrigation systems, infiltration strategies, graywater coordination, and planting palettes continues to shape his practical approach to landscape design.

Alongside practice, Michael has spent years documenting the profession through photography, film, and publishing. He is the owner of HAPS Agency, where he photographs and produces films for architects, interior designers, landscape architects, and builders. He is also the executive producer of The Landscape Architecture Podcast, a long-running platform dedicated to recording the stories, ideas, and motivations of people shaping the field. He has taught architectural storytelling, architectural photography, documentary film, and plant ecology and design at Cal Poly Pomona.

For nicely, Michael brings all of these disciplines together to create landscapes that feel specific to the people who live with them. His work emphasizes planting character, proportion, material clarity, water-conscious systems, outdoor living, and landscapes that become more meaningful as they mature.