In 1992, an 8-year-old kid pushed his dad’s lawn mower up the street and knocked on a neighbor’s door. Mowing for seven dollars a yard. That kid was Eric Maedgen, and that first knock started something that’s still going over three decades later.

Pretty soon, his dad and older brother wanted in. They hooked a trailer to the family van, threw on a couple more mowers, and turned it into a family operation. Summers were spent cutting grass, even his sister and mother joined in. It was hard work, but it was theirs.

Then things got harder. Eric’s brother left for college in ’96. Not long after, their father was diagnosed with cancer. The family operation was suddenly just a kid on his own again, down to a single yard. Forum Cinemas. That one account stayed with him, and Maedgen’s has mowed it every season since 1992. More than thirty years with the same customer. That’s where it all started to mean something.

---

His dad or sister would drive him to jobs because he couldn’t reach the pedals yet. He’d mow the yards, collect the checks, and figure out the rest as he went. By the time he turned 16 and could drive himself, he’d already been running the operation for four years.

When Eric graduated high school in 2003, he was enrolled at State Tech in Linn, Missouri for Commercial Turf and Grounds Management. But that summer between high school and college, a handful of new customers changed everything. Enough work came in to make this a real, full-time business. So he made the call. Skip college. Go all in on what was already working. No backup plan. Just the belief that if he kept doing the work right, the rest would follow.

---

Skipping college didn’t mean he stopped learning. Eric had been attending the GIE+EXPO conference since 2001, two years before he even graduated high school. Every year since, he’s been there. Trade shows, peer groups, industry seminars. Always looking for the next technique, the next piece of equipment, the next way to do the work better. The classroom changed, but the education never stopped.

And it paid off. The business didn’t grow through marketing or clever sales tactics. It grew the old-fashioned way: one long-term relationship at a time. A homeowner who tried Maedgen’s for a season would still be a customer ten years later. A property manager who gave them one building would eventually hand over the whole portfolio. That kind of trust isn’t bought. It’s earned through years of showing up, doing the work right, and never giving someone a reason to look elsewhere.

---

In 2005, that steady growth hit a milestone. There was enough work to bring on his first full-time employee. By 2012, a second mowing crew was running, with jobs stretching all the way down to St. Robert. In 2017, the customer base had grown to the point where Eric hired his first full-time office employee to help manage the demand. By 2019, a third crew was on the road.

What started as a kid with a push mower had grown into something that needed a brand to match. In 2019, the company rebranded with a new logo to reflect it. A year later, in 2020, Maedgen’s made the expansion official by opening a second location in St. Robert to serve the growing demand across Pulaski County.

---

That same philosophy of long-term commitment extends to the people who work here. In 2024, the company’s longest-tenured employee moved back home to St. Louis after spending a decade with Maedgen’s. He’d grown up in the business, knew every standard, every expectation, every detail of how things should be done. Opening a third location in St. Louis West County with him at the helm wasn’t a strategic gamble. It was the natural next step for someone who’d already proven he could carry the culture forward.