Office Gardens: Organic Fun for Your Employees!

Reader Contribution by Michelle Martin
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Didn’t get a pay raise this year? Benefits were cut?

What if your job offered you a garden plot, some seeds, and a smattering of coworkers to accompany your planting and weeding during the lunch hour — and let you reap part of the bounty when it popped out from the ground?

A New York Times article pointed out an emerging trend in the business world: company gardens. From corporations such as Google and PepsiCo to small businesses, employees are joining forces to grow food on the company grounds. The produce eventually goes home with employees who helped hoe and weed, ends up at a food bank, or serves a company purpose (such as providing food for Google’s café). Sometimes companies start these projects to foster a sense of community or simply to provide fresh fruits and vegetables for everyone. Sometimes employees request and commandeer the gardens themselves.

Of course, the quality of the gardens varies quite a bit. Google’s garden is part of a complete food system including a Manager of Culinary Horticulture, who oversees the gardens. Meanwhile, PepsiCo’s garden, roughly the size of two tennis courts, dropped from more than 200 volunteer employees to 75 over the course of the year, and by mid-May few had even seeded their plots. Sometimes the initial morale drops as projects continue piling up on workers’ desks. And occasionally enthusiastic would-be-gardeners simply lose interest.

  • Published on Jun 16, 2010
Tagged with: Reader Contributions
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