ONE OF Shelbyville’s most trusted lawn care services, Adam’s Lawn Service, has been around since 1989. The business started in a bit of an unusual way. Kris Adams, the current owner of the business, was a freshman in high school and was as rowdy as they come. His father, Wade Adams, was a firefighter at Arnold Air Force base. On an ordinary weekday, Wade received a phone call as he was returning home from a 48-hour shift at the fire station. The man on the other end of the phone, Walt Zimmerman, asked for Wade’s son, Kris. Zimmerman owned Bottle Hollow Lodge and was requesting that Kris come mow the estate. Kris’s father was baffled. He had no clue how the man knew of his son or that he has a knack for mowing lawns. He definitely had no clue how the man managed to find his phone number. Regardless, Kris was still in school for a few hours and Wade had a decision to make. He agreed to get started on the property maintenance himself. He brought a 20-inch push mower and began going up and down, back and forth, all across the estate’s land.
As Kris recalled that day, he laughed at how worn out his father was after he push mowed the entire property. Kris said his father, dripping in sweat, picked him up from school and immediately brought Kris to the nearest store to purchase two riding lawn mowers. This essentially marked their first day of business. From that day on, the two were full speed ahead. They gained more and more traction as new clients requested their lawn care services. Wade owned Adam’s Lawn Service for 10 years before Kris purchased the business from him. The business continues to see growth over the years. To this day, Kris steadily employs a crew of about five to seven people year-round. Although Kris’s father retired, the family affair still lives on in some ways as the company’s crew leader, Colby Melson, has been dating Kris’s daughter for over six years.
The crew’s mission at Adam’s Lawn Service is to “leave the world better than you found it.”This goal is intended both physically and metaphorically. It is the team’s obvious intent to make Shelbyville more beautiful to the physical eye. This is achieved by performing their business services such as mowing, hedging, weed eating, blowing, trimming, installing landscapes, and mulching. However, it is also the team’s goal to make Shelbyville more beautiful in ways that the physical eye cannot see. This is done by caring for others and serving the community in whatever capacity possible. One example of this is Kris and his crew taking care of a newly widowed woman’s overgrown field and refusing any payment from her. This example and others similar are ways Shelbyville is being left better than it was found thanks to local, family-owned businesses like Kris’s. -GN
