I was born in Melbourne in 1969 and lived in Coburg for the first six years of my life, at which time we moved to Keilor Park where my parents for many years to come, managed their take-away fish shop with a house upstairs that we learnt to call home sweet home.
I spent the first years of my life studying piano accordion then moved onto classical piano where I went onto receive my diploma in music at Melba Conservatorium of Music.
I spent over a decade of my teenage and early adulthood years working and performing in bands all around Australia, I also taught music as a private teacher on every other day. From as young as I can remember I had the passion to draw and design houses and buildings but even more so to draw trees and landscapes. I wanted to be an architect but unfortunately through the lack of guidance and proper advice, I fell into the wrong course to end up studying building engineering. I was employed by Elliot and Griffiths for a few years, a building & civil engineering firm where my then boss offered me the opportunity to do my first building design renovation for a client.
It was here where my life turned around completely. There was a garden centre that required an extension to their newly acquired residing property. What would have normally taken 2 days of site surveying, had taken me over one week to complete. Until then, I had never stepped foot in a garden centre other than my parent’s, family or friends’ gardens. It was my first experience in a retail garden centre, and it was this garden centre that caused me to decide to leave my job Engineering job to go and pursue a career in owning my own garden centre.
I went on to study horticulture to further my knowledge of the plant kingdom and nature, but the real learning was done in the garden centre as well as in the home gardens of many customers that I spent many days of each week visiting and researching. I expanded my retails garden centre business to include a landscaping division in commercial and residential landscape design and construction.
Through a friend I was given the opportunity to do a gardening segment on 3XY Greek radio from which, through its success broadened out to the beginnings of my own TV Gardening show on CH31 community television. I furthered my career as gardening presenter on 3AW radio and produced a garden series on SBS television as well as a weekly gardening segment on SBS radio.
My accolades include Community TV awards for Best Male Presenter, The Melbourne Awards for Contribution to Sustainability by an Individual and have been ambassador to many environmental and health awareness organisations.
I created the Good Organic Gardening magazine for Universal Magazines, then went on to create my own magazine Vasili’s Garden to Kitchen, that now circulates Australia wide.
I currently produce and broadcast Vasili’s Garden Tv on network 7Two, manufacture and distribute a range of garden products to garden centres across Australia under the brand name Vasili’s Choice.
I am happily married to my darling wife Lisa for the last 27 years and together we have four beautiful adult children Eleni, Louis, Anna and Julia, all of who work with me in the production and distribution company.
