Hawthorne Gardening, a subsidiary of the Marysville, Ohio-based company best known for its garden products, has teamed up with Canadian pot producer Flowr to build a 50,000-square-foot research facility in British Columbia. The lab will initially be used to test Hawthorne’s lights and nutrients on cannabis, but it hopes to eventually study pot genetics and its impact on human physiology.
“Pretty quickly we realized that cannabis and hydroponics were a big opportunity,” said Chris Hagedorn, general manager of Hawthorne and the son of Scotts Chief Executive Officer Jim Hagedorn. “It has become more acceptable to our investor base, to our board, to our management team and the motivation is obvious: it’s a high-growth category.”