Gardening on company time has employees packing seed packets, trowel, and garden gloves in their backpacks and briefcases. From large corporations like Best Buy, Google, and PepsiCo to smaller enterprises like Aveda, Haberman and Lundberg, employees are spreading seed, manure and mulch in the garden instead of gossip at the water cooler.
Workplace food gardens are sprouting for a variety of reasons.
Gardens as an Employee Health Benefit
In the current financial climate when businesses are cutting raises, hours, health insurance, and free family tickets to events, employers must find inviting and affordable employee benefits.
At Twisted Limb® Paperworks in Bloomington, Indiana artisans make handcrafted invitation paper and share an employee organic herb and vegetable garden onsite.
At TS Designs, a cotton t-shirt printing company in Burlington, North Carolina, owner Eric Henry started a company garden to connect his 17 employees to locally grown healthy food and exercise. Employees must spend at least 30 minutes per week tending the twelve 45 foot long rows during paid work time. All employees share in the harvest.
Lundberg, a family owned rice products firm in California, considers gardening as part of its wellness program for employees. Employee participation contributed to a reduction of absences, an increase in productivity, and strengthening of employee health, morale and loyalty.
Eric McClam, urban farm manager for City Roots in Columbia, South Carolina, wants employees to know the gamut of sensory qualities of food production including taste. Employees share in the fruits of their farm labor for their well being on and off the job.
Gardening as Team Building
In the past, corporations have invested in expensive off-site employee team-building events and consultants. Many businesses are finding they can accomplish team building with seeds and raised beds.
At Progressive AE, a design company in Grand Rapids, Michigan, architects, engineers, IT specialists, and other employees who might never communicate or interact with each other during the workday find common ground in down to earth pursuits. The garden becomes a place for employees to form friendships, camaraderie, and a new sense of community in the workplace.
The togetherness of building teepees to support runner beans and mixing manure into the beds is teambuilding. Organization pecking orders disappear while double digging, pulling weeds, and composting. Persistence, a skill needed in most jobs, can be developed in the garden.
The Giving Garden
Businesses give back to the communities where their employees work and live.
PepsiCo has an employee run organic food garden at its corporate headquarters in Purchase, New York. One of the purposes is to supply food to a local food bank.
Haberman, a media and marketing firm in Minneapolis, Minnesota, operates an employee organic garden as a company benefit and marketing strategy to attract new clients. The very successful garden allows employees to donate produce to food pantries in the Twin Cities.
Baxter International, a health care company in Deerfield, Illinois, created a 50’ x 50’ giving garden specifically for local food pantries. Employees get work time endorsed for their volunteer efforts.
Workplace food gardens are a model for how businesses can promote wellness, cooperation, and altruism on the job and into the community.
Sources
- Email correspondence from Eric Henry April 23, 2011 and May 16, 2011
- Phone interview with Sheryl Woodhouse-Keese April 22, 2011
- Phone interview with Eric McClam April 22, 2011
- Haberman website
Arlene Marturano - Arlene Marturano, an educator, consultant, master gardener, and writer advocates gardens as a context and gardening as a tool for ...
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