The Rise of Company Gardens

Learning about gardening at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care in Massachusetts.

PepsiCo has Organic Garden

By Kim Severson
New York Times
May 11, 2010

Excerpts:

Here at the world headquarters of PepsiCo, the masterminds behind $60 billion worth of Mountain Dew, Cheetos and Rice-A-Roni roam polished hallways.

But a five-minute walk away is the organic corporate vegetable garden, where spreadsheets and performance reviews give way to basil starts and black peppermint plants. Employees can sneak out for a quick lunchtime weeding session and cart home the harvest.

Best Buy planted a garden at its headquarters in Richfield, Minn., to help improve the food it serves to 4,600 employees.

“I really looked at it as what difference does a little bit less shrubbery make to my employees? Not much,” said Ian Ellis, director of corporate facilities. “But having fresh herbs and fresh tomatoes would make a big difference.”

A small plot or a few containers can cost a company less than $1,000 to install. At the higher end, Chesapeake Energy, a power company, is finishing a $500,000 garden this week that fills a city block just east of its main campus in Oklahoma City with container beds, gardening sheds and water sources. And there are ongoing expenses, like paying someone to tend the crops when employees can’t.

Cafeteria cooks may be delighted to get fresh herbs and vegetables, but managers can have other concerns, said Kent Buell, a resident district manager with Bon Appétit, the food service company that has installed kitchen gardens for 12 of its 80 corporate clients, including Best Buy, Intel and Target.

See the complete article here.