Orlando McLean Scott founded the company that would become Scotts Miracle-Gro in 1868 in Marysville, Ohio, not with a grand vision of dominating the American lawn but with a simple agricultural innovation: the development of a weed-free grass seed mixture that he sold to farmers and homeowners in the central Ohio region. Scott, a Civil War veteran and amateur horticulturist, had observed that existing grass seed sold in the mid-19th century was typically contaminated with weed seeds, resulting in lawns and pastures that required constant maintenance. He developed a cleaning and sorting process that removed weed seeds from grass seed mixtures, creating a premium product that commanded higher prices and established the quality differentiation that would define the Scotts brand for the next 157 years. The original business, O.M. Scott & Sons, operated as a family-owned seed company for decades, expanding gradually from Ohio into the Midwest and eventually nationally through mail-order catalogs and retail partnerships with hardware stores and garden centers. The company's growth accelerated in the post-World War II era as suburbanization created millions of new lawns across America and the development of synthetic fertilizers and herbicides transformed lawn care from a manual, labor-intensive activity into a product-driven consumer category. In 1953, the company introduced the first weed-and-feed lawn fertilizer, combining nitrogen fertilizer with 2,4-D herbicide in a single application, a product innovation that revolutionized lawn maintenance and established the "weed and feed" category that remains a core revenue driver today. The company went public in the 1960s and continued to grow through organic product development and regional acquisitions, but its transformation into a modern consumer products giant began in 1995 with the merger with Stern's Miracle-Gro Products, Inc., a New York-based company founded by Horace Hagedorn and Otto Stern in 1951. Horace Hagedorn, a former advertising executive at the Lord & Thomas agency, had partnered with Otto Stern, a nurseryman, to develop and market a water-soluble plant food that could be mixed in a watering can and applied directly to plants. The product, named Miracle-Gro, became the dominant brand in the gardening plant food category through aggressive television advertising, including the memorable slogan "Miracle-Gro makes plants grow like magic" and celebrity endorsements from gardening personalities. The 1995 merger created The Scotts Company, combining Scotts' dominance in lawn care with Miracle-Gro's leadership in gardening products, and Horace Hagedorn's son James Hagedorn joined the combined company, eventually becoming CEO in 2001 and leading the company through its most transformative period. Under James Hagedorn's leadership, Scotts pursued a strategy of brand consolidation, retail expansion, and international growth, acquiring the Ortho brand of insect and weed control products from Chevron in 1999, the Roundup marketing agreement from Monsanto in 1998, and various European and Australian lawn and garden businesses. The company changed its name to The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company in 2005 to reflect the equal importance of the Scotts and Miracle-Gro brands, and that same year initiated the dividend program that has returned over $2 billion to shareholders through 2024. The 2010s saw the company solidify its retail dominance as Home Depot and Lowe's expanded their lawn and garden departments and Scotts invested heavily in in-store merchandising, pallet displays, and dedicated retail service teams. The company's revenue grew from $2.7 billion in fiscal 2005 to $3.0 billion in fiscal 2015, a modest but steady trajectory that reflected the mature nature of the U.S. lawn and garden market. The most controversial chapter in the company's history began in 2015 when James Hagedorn, convinced that the legalization of cannabis in U.S. states would create a massive market for professional hydroponic equipment, directed Scotts to acquire General Hydroponics for approximately $120 million, Vermicrop for approximately $15 million, and subsequently Gavita, Botanicare, Agrolux, Can-Filters, Sunlight Supply, AeroGrow International, and Luxx Lighting, investing over $1 billion to build Hawthorne Gardening Company into the dominant supplier to the cannabis cultivation industry. This bet initially appeared prescient as Hawthorne revenue surged from $187 million in fiscal 2016 to $891 million in fiscal 2021, but the collapse of cannabis capital markets, oversupply in state-legal markets, and the failure of federal legalization turned the hydroponics division into a persistent money-loser that consumed management attention and balance sheet capacity. The April 2026 sale of Hawthorne to Vireo Growth effectively ended this chapter, returning Scotts to its roots as a consumer lawn and garden company.