The Scotts Story O M Scott, founder 1 \ in50 years at Scotts. This little booklet is have an attractive lawn around a home is certainly To one of the enduring pleasures of life, as 1 have dis­ covered about the company that started small and became big by making it possible for more people to experience that pleasure. 1 believe you will find the eight minutes required to read it most rewarding. CHAIRMAN The Scotts Story Everyone knows who invented the steamboat and the elec­ tric light, but nobody knows who invented the lawn. Presumably it was the first man who cut down the wild grass around his dwelling and then, seeing that a carpet of green was a pleasing sight, put sheep on it to keep it cropped. Perhaps it was Adam. Certainly the single most influ­ ential person in the history of the American lawn was O M Scott of Marysville, Ohio, although he cer­ tainly was never conscious of that distinction in his own lifetime. When the Civil War was over, to Marysville and he returned there started a country elevator. He saw farmers struggling to sep­ arate their grain from the weeds and he saw that it was a losing battle unless they could obtain weed-free seed to begin with. So he devoted his life to that project and, without knowing it, made possible the endless acres of rich green, weed-free lawns that beau­ tify our land today. Over the years, as a result of patient selection and the develop­ ment of refined cleaning methods, O M Scott and his sons, Dwight and Hubert, learned more about the production of weed-free seed than anyone had ever known be­ fore. And when the builders of America’s first golf courses looked around for a grass that would give them clean fairways they discov­ ered that Scotts — and only Scotts — were supplying grass seed that was an incredible 99.9% weed free — as all Scotts grass seed is today. The call for Scotts began to in­ crease dramatically. It has never stopped increasing. Today, Scotts is in the world whose efforts are devoted exclusively to the betterment of lawns. And most of the improve­ ments in lawn products and practices were pioneered and in­ troduced by Scotts. largest company the 3 4 Left: Where does grass seed come from? Much of the very best comes from our own Pacific Northwest where thousands of acres are devoted to growing varieties that were developed, tested and bred by Scotts. Upper left: The most modern lawn seed plant in the world — as tall as a seven story building and nearly half a mile around. Here it is that every single ounce of Scotts seed goes through the most rigorous process of cleaning and sampling and testing and blending. Center left: Incoming seed is cleaned by a battery of Scotts machines designed to remove weed seeds and every unwanted particle no matter how small. The entire plant is as spic and span as a just-cleaned living room. Lower left: Samples of every lot of seed are examined under the microscope, then grown in incubators to check their ger­ mination power. Such quality control is incessant at Scotts. Left: One man at the controls of a giant console can blend seed from any of 104 giant storage bins in any proportion. It will be delivered, mixedf weighed, boxed and crated — all automatically. A recent visitor, after going through this plant, said ”Now l know what the General Motors of grass looks like!” 5 If you were to come out to Marysville, Ohio, you would see acres of green divided into thousands of research test plots. It is here that new products for the lawns of tomorrow are being developed. (As a matter of fact, Scotts carries on more lawn re­ search than all the country’s agri­ cultural research stations put together.) New and better strains of lawn grass are hybridized, selected and evaluated under all variations of watering, feeding and mowing. And it is from the research here that come the wonderful new con­ trols. These enable you to have a lawn free from the ravages of weeds, of insects and of diseases. You can enjoy it without the end­ less labor that used to be necessary. A chemical that passes all the rigorous tests at Marysville then goes to Scotts six lawn research areas, each in a different climatic zone. Then, if it continues to per­ form satisfactorily, comes the toughest test of all. It is used experimentally on hundreds of home lawns across the country. Only the product that survives this rigorous schedule earns the right to go into a bag with the Scotts label. You can be sure that it is dependable and that the promise on the package will be performed. Hundreds of chemical formulas are tried out every year. In one year, 1962, over 3000 plots were treated in a single study of pre-emergence herbicides. These are the controls that enable you to stop weeds, such as crabgrass, before they get a chance to develop. ► Just as the Scotts lawn seed plant is the largest in the world, so this Scotts chemical plant is the largest of any devoted exclusively to the making of lawn products. To give you a quick idea of its size, it is as big in floor space as eight football fields put together. The size of this plant is a measure of the acceptance that the nation has given to Scotts products. These prod­ ucts have made a lovely lawn easier than ever for anyone to have and to maintain. As Detroit is the headquarters for automobile engineering, so Marysville is the headquarters for lawn research. That is why, every year, hundreds of men from every state of the Union, attend the Scotts Lawn Counselor Institute at Marysville, Ohio. The curriculum combines work and study in the class­ room and out on the grass. Students learn how to diagnose lawn diseases and insects, identify weeds, learn how to tailor- make the correct Scotts Program to fit the special require­ ments of any lawn situation. These Scotts Counselor graduates then go home and train others. In this way, the newest techniques in lawn culture are quickly made available to home owners almost everywhere.