If you ever meet Jim Webb, owner of Valley Landscape Services Inc. in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, just remember one thing — don’t call him a cowboy. “I ain’t no cowboy,” explains the southern California transplant. “I’m a California boy who just lives around cowboys.” As a matter of fact, the closest he comes to anything out of the Old West is his practice of being a straight shooter with his employees and customers. “I believe in being honest in my business,” relates Webb, “and it hasn’t done me wrong yet.”

Imagine for a moment that you’re 53 years old and had worked full-time for Borden Dairy for 33 years. For a change a pace, you decide to join your son in a newly formed lawn maintenance venture. Change of pace, and how! For Bill Dardenne, the story unfolded in 1996 when he and son Dennis purchased a Grasshopper mower and a couple of string trimmers. The kicker was they didn’t have any customers, only the confidence to know they could succeed.

George Moore Jr. says he never planned on growing his company to the size it is today. Yet, in 10 short years, his company, Green Acres Landscaping, in Ridgeville, South Carolina, has grown from a one-person operation into a large, full-service landscape company. And it has a reputation that gives it entrée into some of the most prestigious commercial properties in the Charleston area.

Xavier University is an alluring college campus. Woven like a fine tapestry into the cityscape of Cincinnati, this urban college is a parade of old buildings and mature landscapes that challenges even the keenest eye to decipher where the campus begins and where it ends.