It’s been almost two weeks since the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) events on the White House’s South Lawn, and photos from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Wednesday still showed missing grass. Behind the scenes, a project to revamp the lawn is underway.
Landscaping company ScottsMiracle-Gro has pledged to take on the project with a $1 million donation to the National Park Service, which maintains the lawn. Nate Baxter, chief operating officer of ScottsMiracle-Gro, told FOX Business earlier this month that he had brought his research team to the White House to start planning for the project and meet with President Donald Trump.
“The president knows a lot about grass. I think his history and past with golf courses,” Baxter said of Trump, who had a long career developing real estate before jumping into presidential politics. “It was really interesting to watch our tour scientists and President Trump talk through each of these.”
According to The Hill, ScottsMiracle-Gro is an Ohio based company and Baxter is a longtime Trump supporter. No taxpayer dollars are expected to go towards the project.
For the UFC Freedom 250 event at the White House, a huge Octagon ring was constructed, along with a 92-foot-tall feature called “the Claw,” right in front of the presidential mansion. UFC CEO Dana White said that the UFC didn’t profit off the event, but that it was a great promotional opportunity. He also said that $700,000 had been budgeted to mitigate damage to the lawn.
Going forward, the restoration of the lawn is expected to take place in phases over the next year. So far, Scotts said they have settled on a four-seed blend of grass “engineered to withstand heavy staging equipment and helicopter landings.”
Matthew Koch, a Research and Development Lawns Research Fellow at ScottsMiracle-Gro, said in a press release cited by FOX Business that creating the blend came with a “distinct set of challenges,” since it gets battered footsteps at events all year. Now that it’s been selected, and the UFC infrastructure has come down, there’s also a previously scheduled public infrastructure project on the grounds, FOX Business noted.
Then, the restoration project is really expected to kick into gear in July with the installation of mature sod. Technicians will wait for cooler temperatures to arrive to overseed the lawn with the custom seed blend.
Once cooler autumn temperatures arrive, technicians will overseed the lawn with the custom four-seed blend, FOX Business said. Next spring, a final round of overseeding and fertilization is expected to complete the restoration.
“The extent of the repairs to the nearby Ellipse, which was similarly damaged during the UFC event held earlier this month, remained unclear,” The Hill said this week. In addition to the grassy areas, the Trump administration has started a controversial plan to construct a ballroom on the White House grounds.
