After being a Wal-Mart Supercenter co-manager for 10 years, Roger Krans wanted a change. “I wanted to do something different, but I just didn’t have the guts to leave the corporate life,” he recalls. “I had good benefits and was making a good wage, and starting your own business can be risky when you have a family.”

A first glance, the 25-acre campus at San Joaquin Gardens in Fresno, California, appears more like a display garden than a retirement community. It’s actually both.

It’s a picture perfect Colorado morning in Grand Junction. The blue sky and distant mountains provide the ideal backdrop for four Walker Mowers and a John Deere wide-area mower making their way across the green expanse.

When you enter the Crystal Cathedral grounds in Garden Grove, California, the beautiful landscape setting isn’t the first thing that catches your eye. The Cathedral itself, with more than 10,000 tempered silver-colored glass windows, together with a towering spire and prayer chapel, provide plenty of visual interest.

It’s a hot morning in Rockport, Maine. The mowing crews anticipate the heat as they discuss the day’s activity with Tom Farley. Tom is the vice president of Farley & Son Landscaping, and every Wednesday he meets with his six mowing crews.

Lori Miller has a story to tell you about her son, Mark. “When he was nine years old, he walked into the house one day and told me he saw a trailer down the road that he wanted us to buy for him. Well, to make a long story short, my husband, Glenn, and I purchased the trailer and gave it to Mark as a Christmas present. He wanted the trailer to haul around our lawn mower because, even back then, mowing was his passion.” It’s a passion that’s never waned.