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Hermes Landscaping History

In 1965, at the age of 33,father of six John T. Hermes gave up his job as a traveling salesman to start his own landscaping business. Having grown up on a farm in Oklahoma, John T. felt drawn to return to his roots in agri-business and wasn’t afraid of a little sweat.

The company was born as Country Fair Lawns. Our very first customer was the Glenwood Manor Motel, and some small city government contracts and lawn care for area homeowners followed. We took up residence in a quaint (i.e. dilapidated) farmstead building on the east side of I-35 in Lenexa. John T. ran his business with the same small-town values he had grown up with: integrity, commitment, and plenty of hard work. “I’ll never forget the first winter I faced,” John T remembers. “I didn’t know what I would find or do. We took on a house remodeling job and janitorial maintenance of some smaller office buildings to get by.”

The company succeeded in getting bonding in 1967 and established some legitimacy.  Our first “big job” was seeding I-435 from Metcalf to State Line. In 1969, we moved into our own building on Santa Fe Trail Drive, now affectionately known as “Main.” Several Hermes family members have contributed to the success of the business:—John T’s brother Jody, and all six of John T’s children, and several cousins, uncles and aunts have all played a part at various times over the years.

The 1970s brought tremendous growth, and the company began landing more and more commercial installation jobs. In the winter of 1972, we successfully installed Independence Shopping Center, soon to be followed by Metro North Mall, Bannister Mall, parts of Ward Parkway and Oak Park Mall, among others.

The company also had several ongoing maintenance contracts with General Motors and GSA, keeping us busy and moving forward, and Hermes Nursery was founded as a wholly owned subsidiary to serve our growing need for quality plant material. “We did work in virtually every crook and cranny of the entire city,” recalls John T. “Seems like I’ve been around too long, I can’t even remember all of the places.”

But all that growing came to a screeching halt in 1981 when the economy stalled. John T. briefly opened offices in Oklahoma and Colorado, trying to scrape up additional work. In 1983, needing to diversify and add some fresh blood, the company was reborn as Hermes Landscaping, Inc.

 Shortly after in 1986, John T’s eldest son, Dalton, returned from school in California, and the “Dalton Era” got underway. He began pounding the pavement to drum up business, calling on apartment builders, contractors, and others. The General Motors Plant project landed in 1987, followed soon after by the Woodlands Racetrack. Hermes was shooting forward again.

Under Dalton’s strong leadership and love of “to-do” lists, Hermes re-organized. We developed more sophisticated processes for operations, recruiting, sales and marketing. We expanded our facilities and farmland and grew our fleet of trucks and equipment. Dalton was among the first in the country to utilize the H2B guest worker program, which allowed the company to bring wonderful laborers from Mexico to work with us through the season. Dalton’s brother, Gilbert, came onboard for several years, growing Hermes Nursery into a successful wholesale operation, shipping to other landscapers all over the Midwest.

Through the 90s and into today, Hermes Landscaping has enjoyed steady growth and a litany of achievements—having our hand in some of Kansas City’s most beautiful and exciting projects, being named one of the city’s Top 10 Small Businesses and one of Lawn & Landscape magazine’s Top 100 Landscapers, to name a few.