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The Scott's Miracle-Gro Company: a cure worse than the disease

  • Writer: Emma Baker
    Emma Baker
  • Jun 25
  • 3 min read

The Scott's Miracle-Gro Company recently announced their intention to repair the White House lawn following the 'Freedom 250 Event.' After the lawn was torn up by fights both professional and drunken, it looked more demolished than our democracy(1). The Scott's Company, headed by Trump-supporting CEO Jim Hagedorn, publicly offered $1 million to resod and reseed the lawn(2, 3). In our mafia-style government, this style of bribery is a near-daily headline. For Scott's, it's another shameful chapter in a history of destruction.


Creeping Charlie, Glechoma hederacea, in turfgrass
Creeping Charlie, Glechoma hederacea, in turfgrass

O.M. Scott and Sons was founded in 1868 to sell bluegrass seed to golf courses, but soon expanded to new grass markets. During WWII, Scott's was influential in the military's decision to surround munitions factories and federal housing projects with grass. Workers on these military bases were trained to maintain these lawns and supplied with copies of the Scott's Company's tract Lawn Care. After the war golf was used as a rehabilitation exercise for wounded veterans, and golf exploded in popularity during the 1950's and 1960's. Capitalizing on the trend, horticultural businesses like Scott's advertised the golf course look as the epitome of suburban living(4).


Golf courses are landscapes on life support. They require massive amounts of water, fertilizer, herbicide, and fossil fuels to maintain their appearance. Mowing, dethatching, dredging, overseeding, pruning, rolling, and spraying are constantly required, making it an extremely profitable aesthetic standard for companies like Scott's. Nowhere exemplified this new suburban aesthetic like Levittown, Pennsylvania. Designed as the paradigmatic mass-produced postwar suburb, lease agreements contained stipulations on lawn control just above those on racial control(5). For American fascism, nostalgia for this era is essential fertilizer.


The White House lawn has always been a political signal. One hundred and ten years ago, President Woodrow Wilson signaled wartime frugality by making the White House grounds a pasture for sheep(6). Thirty five years ago, environmentalist Michael Pollan wrote an op-ed in the New York Times demanding then-president Bush 'Abolish the White House Lawn(7).' Today, Scott's promises to return the lawn to a perfect green vision of the imaginary past.


White House south lawn. Wikimedia Commons
White House south lawn. Wikimedia Commons

But making that vision a reality has consequences, and nostalgia has a dark side. Lawns have caused catastrophic habitat loss, driven pesticide and fertilizer pollution, and contributed to climate change(8). Behind much of it, The Scott's Miracle-Gro Company's relentless push to normalize a vision of life that it profits from. Paul Robbins, Professor of Geography at the University of Arizona, writes in his book Lawn People:


"The fact is, that as tenacious as the modern lawn seems to be (indeed as the entire stubborn postwar world), it is actually not much older than the Baby Boom and is pretty easy to kill in an hour with a systemic herbicide. It is certainly fixed but it is incredibly fragile. Indeed, the case of the lawn is one that reveals just how much terrific effort (in labor-hours, advertising dollars, daily conversation) is required to prop up an inevitable and directional vision of the world, the energy necessary to actually produce the normal, and the ease with which it might therefore give way towards something else(9)."


We're in a time of immense political and social upheaval, that much is obvious. I hope we can grasp at the root of our preconceptions about both society and nature, and work towards a radically different normal. A good start would be to tear out our lawns.


turf grass macro, author's back yard
turf grass macro, author's back yard

  1. Willis, Alexander. (2026, June 20). Gasps as Trump’s birthday bash leaves White House grounds in 'terrible' condition. MSN. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/gasps-as-trump-s-birthday-bash-leaves-white-house-grounds-in-terrible-condition/ar-AA268NDF?ocid=socialshare.

  2. Wang, Amy B. (2026, June 22). Trump supporter’s company pledges $1M to fix White House lawn after UFC event. USA Today. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/06/22/whitehouse-lawn-grass-scottsmiracle-gro-million-trump/90650632007.

  3. Matthews, Tom. (2026, June 11). Scotts Miracle-Gro Commits $1 Million to Support White House South Lawn Restoration Following UFC Freedom 250 Event. Scott's Miracle-Gro Company. https://scottsmiraclegro.gcs-web.com/news-releases/news-release-details/scottsmiracle-gro-commits-1-million-support-white-house-south.

  4. Jenkins, Virginia Scott. (1994). The Lawn: A History of an American Obsession. Smithsonian Institution Press.

  5. Kushner, David. (2002). Levittown: Two Families, One Tycoon, and the Fight for Civil Rights in America's Legendary Suburb. United Kingdom: Bloomsbury Publishing.

  6. Studarus, Laura. (2026, June 11). The Reinventions of the White House Lawn: Playground, Pasture, Stage. History. https://www.history.com/articles/white-house-south-lawn-events

  7. Pollan, Michael. (1991). Abolish the White House Lawn. The New York Times. https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/ref/opinion/22op-classic.html.

  8. Hardt, Braelei. (2024, August 30). Dangers of Lawn Chemicals: Impacts and Alternatives. National Wildlife Federation Blog. https://blog.nwf.org/2024/08/dangers-of-lawn-chemicals-impacts-and-alternatives/.

  9. Robbins, Paul. (2007). Lawn People: How Grasses, Weeds, and Chemicals Make Us Who We Are. Temple University Press. p. 137




 
 
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