A Visit to Scotts Miracle-Gro Headquarters
As a passionate gardener, I am always very interested in learning how I can improve my gardens.
This past spring, I travelled to Marysville, Ohio, to visit the Scotts Miracle-Gro Company, the world’s largest marketer of branded consumer lawn and garden products. The Scotts Company was founded in 1868 by O.M. Scott as a premium seed company for the United States agricultural industry. In 1995, the company celebrated a significant milestone when Scotts, the leading lawn care brand, merged with Miracle-Gro, the leading gardening brand, creating the Scotts Miracle-Gro Company. During my day-long visit, I was happy to meet the Research and Development and Brand teams, and to hear about and provide insights on key strategies and new innovations they are developing.
Here are some photos.
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- The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company headquarters is still located in Marysville, Ohio where O.M. Scott began selling seed. He sold weed-free seed to local farmers and then expanded to selling seed to homeowners after the turn of the century.
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- All administrative departments have been located on this campus along Scottslawn Road since 1982.
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- The day’s visit included several presentations. The Miracle-Gro team discussed ways that would make better use of the benefits of organic raw materials like earthworm castings, biochar, bone meal, and poultry litter. One of their goals is to help refresh old depleted soil leftover in raised bed gardens.
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- These Miracle-Gro samples show a variety of the different raw materials. Many of them act as natural fertilizers and soil amendments which improve soil structure, enhance nutrient availability, and boost plant health and productivity.
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- Miracle-Gro already adds quality base ingredients to their soil mixes.
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- Here, Bonnie Plants shares trial work they are conducting on compact plant varieties to help shape the future of fruit and vegetable specimens so that consumers can grow even more successfully in small spaces.
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- The Lawns team shares their new brand, O.M. Scott & Sons, which features a product line-up of natural grass food and grass seeds, including alternatives seeds like clover. All of the products are safe for use around people and pets, contain no added official ingredients or pesticides, and are packaged in a curbside recyclable paper bag.
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- These products begin feeding the lawn as soon as it is applied and then continue to feed for up to 10-weeks.
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- It was nice to see up close how passionate the Scotts Miracle-Gro teams are to creating more innovative and user-friendly products for the home gardener.
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- Next, I showed photos of my farm and gardens – and how beautiful they have grown because of my nutrient-rich soil and use of Miracle-Gro Plant Food. This is a photo of my Stewartia garden. It is a perennial bed located behind the house where my daughter and grandchildren stay when they visit.
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- The space used to be planted with rows and rows of ferns and lilies. Now the garden is filled with beautiful Stewartia trees and lush, green shade-loving specimens including Epimediums, Syneilesis, Polygonatum, Astilboides and so much more.
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- I also have a variety of Japanese maples in this garden that add superlative color and texture.
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- This slide is of my Summer House Garden, a formal sunken garden I designed and created shortly after moving to the property.
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- It is a kind of “room” walled by a tall hedge of boxwood. The focal point is the great old ginkgo tree at the back of the space that is original to the farm. Over time, I’ve planted American and English boxwood, smaller ginkgo trees, smoke bushes, Siberian weeping pea shrubs, peonies, hostas, lilies, Leucojum, and others.
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- And of course, I showed my half-acre vegetable garden where I’ve used lots of wonderful Scotts Miracle-Gro Organic soil. This garden, which is now in its third growing season, is already planted with many wonderful crops – tomatoes, brassicas, artichokes, fava beans, celery, carrots, sweet and hot peppers, peas, all sorts of herbs, etc.
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- Here is this year’s kale bed – so lush and green.
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- And here is the long center bed where I grow lots of peas – one section for shelling peas, which need to be removed from their pods before eating, and another for edible pods, which can be eaten whole, such as our snap peas.
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- We all enjoyed the informative day with the scientists and brand managers at Scotts Miracle-Gro learning about their organic solutions to everyone’s gardening problems. I’m looking forward to implementing what I learned back at my farm. For more information, fo to the Scotts Miracle-Gro web site.
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