Trump Plugs Scotts Miracle-Gro After Company Redid White House Lawn for Free

President Trump used an Oval Office press appearance Monday to publicly promote Scotts Miracle-Gro, an Ohio-based lawn and garden company, crediting them for replacing the White House lawn at no cost. Trump said the deal came through a friend who offered to do the job for free, and he accepted on the spot. He also announced the company would be resodding roughly 700 acres of parks across Washington, D.C. with what he called the best grass available.

Scotts Miracle-Gro had announced in June a $1 million contribution to the National Park Service to restore the White House South Lawn after it was damaged by a UFC event held on June 14 — Trump's 80th birthday — as part of the America 250 celebrations. The company also donated $500,000 to a pro-Trump PAC in 2024, adding a financial political dimension to the relationship.

The endorsement fits a clear and growing pattern. Trump has used the White House platform to boost Tesla after Elon Musk joined DOGE, urged Americans to buy Dell computers after CEO Michael Dell pledged to fund Trump Accounts for children, and praised Walmart for price cuts he claimed were made at the administration's request — though Walmart never confirmed that. Ethics watchdogs see these as transactional endorsements dressed up as casual praise.

Davina Hurt, director of government ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, warned that favors extended to presidents have a way of becoming implicit invoices, rarely visible to the public. Richard Painter, chief ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, said the Bush and Obama administrations categorically refused to promote private contractors, and that doing work on the White House in exchange for publicity would have been a flat-out no under Bush. Painter said the first Trump term broke those norms, and the current administration has pushed normalization even further.

The core ethics concern isn't just the optics — it's the absence of a competitive bidding process. Without documented open competition for government contracts, Hurt argues, the public has no assurance that vendors are chosen on merit rather than political loyalty, which undermines the foundational idea that government serves the people rather than a network of friends and donors.