The man who keeps the ScottsMiracle-Gro campus looking so good

Like most people raised in Marysville, Ohio, Ed Baldwin grew up admiring the manicured lawns and vibrant gardens of ScottsMiracle-Gro headquarters. Who knew that one day he’d be the person keeping it looking so perfectly groomed?

After a career maintaining golf courses, he has the at times high-pressure job of ensuring that these historic grounds continue to impress and inspire new generations of visitors and company associates alike. That requires a commitment to beloved traditions, along with the curiosity and courage to continually try new things. And above all, it takes consistency — adhering to a daily and seasonal work chart that is as relentless as its results are rewarding.

As landscape lead at ScottsMiracle-Gro, Baldwin, his crew, and subcontractors tend to some 250 acres of “fine turf,” plus another 100 acres of other land. We caught up with Baldwin to learn more about how he keeps this iconic landscape looking, well, iconic. 

Of course, there are pops of color all over the campus as well, and Baldwin constantly experiments with the annual flower beds. Since arriving, he’s swapped out the spring displays of pansies and ornamental cabbage and kale — which were beautiful when they flourished but “had too many ugly days” — with tulips, planting 40,000 bulbs in new color arrangements each fall. When the tulips finish flowering, they’re replaced with annuals that rotate each year to help prevent soil disease.

"We don't like to put mulch around our annual flowers," says Baldwin. "With watering, mulch will cake up and actually prevent water and air from infiltrating the soil. We'd rather use a composting-type soil amendment, which looks good around the fresh new planting but also helps the soil."

The good and the bad thing about managing the grounds at such a high-profile lawn and garden company is that your work is constantly being eyeballed by on-site experts. “If a lawn starts to get brown, my phone starts ringing,” Baldwin says. But last spring, his phone was ringing with a different kind of news.

Four seasons ago, during the winter, Baldwin’s team had started “chipping away” at a long-neglected eyesore — a dyke separating two ponds behind corporate headquarters, which had become a forgotten zone. But Baldwin and his team sensed enormous potential, offering a combination of sun and shade, and a little waterfall connecting the upper and lower pond. 

Over the next couple of years, his group put in new plantings, irrigation, and benches — and even rebuilt a bridge across the waterfall with massive slabs of limestone. “We did it like the Egyptians,” he says, “using spud bars to roll these 3,000-pound slabs on pipes to slide them into place.”  

The spot where most people had never set foot became a favorite spot for outdoor meetings or a bit of quiet contemplation. About that phone call Baldwin received? It was from a colleague, telling him that ScottsMiracle-Gro’s top executive and a guest were sitting on a bench there, enjoying the verdant setting. “That was pretty neat,” says Baldwin.