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TruGreen

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

TruGreen Limited Partnership
TypePrivate
IndustryLawn care services
Pest control
Tree care
Founded1969 in Troy, Ohio (as ChemLawn)
1973 in Troy, Michigan (as ChemGreen)
HeadquartersMemphis, Tennessee
Key people
Kurt Kane (CEO & President)
Ben Dunham (Executive Vice President and CFO)
Alyssa Puketza (Senior Vice President & Chief Marketing Officer)
Brian Bugara (Senior Vice President and Chief Revenue Officer)
Bill Hausbeck

(Senior Vice President of Operations)
Ayman Taha (Senior Vice President & Chief Information & Digital Officer)
Christine Belknap (Senior Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer)
Kevin Mann

(Senior Vice President and General Counsel)
Shannon Lopez (Vice President)
Websitewww.trugreen.com

TruGreen, originally known as ChemLawn and later as TruGreen ChemLawn, is the largest lawn care company in the United States.[1][2][3] The company was founded in 1969 and provides lawn care and tree and shrub care treatments on a subscription basis (except in New York where it is by contract basis regarding pest control regulations).[4] The treatments and services include weed killing, moss suppression, pesticides, insect control, disease management, aeration, overseeding, and fertilizing. The company neither offers lawn mowing service or landscaping as a sellable service. Tree and shrub services as well as several insect control programs are offered by TruGreen. The TruGreen brand is also used for lawn services in Canada through a Mississauga, Ontario–based company named Greenlawn Ltd. that does business as TruGreen.[5][6] The TruGreen brand, under ServiceMaster, also is used in the United Kingdom.[7]

The company's history includes several changes of ownership and the absorption of other lawn servicing operations including ChemGreen (originally founded in 1974) and Scotts LawnService (originally founded as Emerald Green Lawn Service before its purchase in 1997 by the Scotts Miracle-Gro Company).

History

[edit]
The since-demolished Chemlawn Corporate Center in Columbus, Ohio
A TruGreen lawn care service van in Pittsfield Township, Michigan

Father and son, Paul and Richard Duke, ran a gardening center called the Duke Garden Centers.[8] They, alongside former garden center employee Thomas Grapner, founded ChemLawn in 1969 in Troy, Ohio, and it became a large service provider in the 1970s.[9][10][11][12][13]

A separate company called ChemGreen, considered to be the precursor to TruGreen, had been founded in 1973 in Michigan.[11] ServiceMaster also bought ChemGreen in 1992, and rebranded the combination as "TruGreen ChemLawn" and then just as "TruGreen" in 2007, trying to distance the brand from negative perceptions about the intensive use of chemicals and convey a greater sense of environmental responsibility.

The Dukes sold ChemLawn to Ecolab in 1987 for US$376 million, but Ecolab found it was unable to make the operation profitable, and it sold the business to ServiceMaster in 1992 for US$103 million.[14][15] As part of ServiceMaster, the operational headquarters were moved soon after the acquisition to Memphis, Tennessee, where ServiceMaster was headquartered at the time and where TruGreen remains headquartered today, from Columbus, Ohio,[15] In 1997, Rollins, Inc. sold its Orkin lawn care brand to TruGreen.[16] TruGreen was then spun off as a separate company from ServiceMaster in January 2014. The private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice had majority ownership along with company management.[17]

In 2024, TruGreen moved its C-suite to Franklin, Tennessee, near Nashville although the headquarters remain in Memphis.[18]

Scotts LawnService

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Scotts LawnService was a subdivision of the Scotts Miracle-Gro Company, an American multinational corporation headquartered in Marysville, Ohio. It was founded with the acquisition of Emerald Green Lawn Care in 1998. It provided lawn, tree, and shrub care and pest control.

In 2002, Scotts LawnService acquired The Lawn Company, a major lawn care service company in the Boston area,[19] and substantially all of the lawn care operations of Centex HomeTeam Services, a division of Centex Corporation.[20]

In April 2016 TruGreen announced that it had merged with Scotts LawnService. After the merger the Scotts brand was no longer used, and Scotts customers no longer received Scotts brand products as part of their lawn treatments; they were instead switched over to products used by TruGreen. The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company retained a 30% stake in the company after the merger, with the option to buy the operations back in the future from TruGreen.

In 2019, Scotts Miracle-Gro sold its 30% minority stake in TruGreen for approximately $234 million.[17] As of February 2023, the lawn servicing operation is marketed as TruGreen, with the Scotts brand basically retired from the lawn servicing business. The Scotts brand remains in use for consumer lawn, garden and pest control products sold by the Scotts Miracle-Gro Company, which is now a separate company.

References

[edit]
  1. ↑ "TruGreen (official website)". TruGreen. Retrieved February 18, 2023.
  2. ↑ "TruGreen/ChemLawn: What Happened?". Pure Green. October 23, 2017. Retrieved February 18, 2023.
  3. ↑ Palmer, Robert. "What Ever Happened To ChemLawn?". Weed Pro. Retrieved February 18, 2023.
  4. ↑ "Landscaper TruGreen's sales, billing tactics 'deceptive,' New York AG says". June 8, 2010.
  5. ↑ "TruGreen". TruGreen Canada official website. GreenLawn, Ltd. Retrieved March 11, 2023.
  6. ↑ "Greenlawn, Ltd". Dun & Bradstreet. Retrieved March 11, 2023.
  7. ↑ "TruGreen Professional Lawn Care – British Franchise Association". www.thebfa.org. Retrieved February 22, 2024.
  8. ↑ "We were there at birth of lawn care" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on March 8, 2016.
  9. ↑ Steinberg, Ted (October 27, 2020). American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-86699-5. Retrieved December 13, 2025.
  10. ↑ "2016 Leadership in Philanthropy Award | The Columbus Foundation". columbusfoundation.org. Retrieved December 13, 2025.
  11. 1 2 Palmieri, Marisa; Limpert, Kelly (December 10, 2015). "Timeline: History of TruGreen, Scotts LawnService". Landscape Management.
  12. ↑ "The personality that ignited an industry" (PDF). lib.msu.edu.
  13. ↑ "Green Piece". The Washington Post. March 20, 1999.
  14. ↑ "Lawn Care Industry Grows Like Crab Grass". Chicago Tribune. May 29, 1988.
  15. 1 2 "Ecolab Inc. History". Funding Universe. Retrieved February 21, 2023.
  16. ↑ Jones, Dow (July 25, 1997). "ServiceMaster Unit Buys Rollins Landscaping Divisions". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved February 22, 2024.
  17. 1 2 Castelli, Giovanni (March 22, 2019). "ScottsMiracle-Gro sells TruGreen stake to retire debt". Lawn & Landscape. Retrieved May 8, 2019.
  18. ↑ Sophia Young (July 16, 2024). "Memphis giant moves C-suite to Franklin, rejects HQ label". Archived from the original on July 16, 2024.
  19. ↑ "Scotts LawnService Announces Largest Acquisition to Date" (Press release). The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company. March 14, 2002. Retrieved September 19, 2007.
  20. ↑ "Scotts LawnService Acquires Lawn Care Operations From Centex HomeTeam Services" (Press release). The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company. August 13, 2002. Retrieved September 19, 2007.
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