上班“种菜”：随处可见的新时尚

    天伯伦（Timberland）公司位于美国新罕布什尔州斯特拉汉总部的员工菜园不仅“啃噬”了公司草坪，还要继续开新疆辟新土。去年秋天，员工在公司前面交叉种植了果树；今年，他们还要搭架结藤，在这里种上本地葡萄；明年，员工们会将公司租用办公区后面的绿茵地开垦成一片蓝莓田。

    “我们马上就没‘田’可种了”，该公司环境工作高级经理贝琪•布莱斯代说。天伯伦是一家专门出品靴子、鞋子及其他户外用品的公司。

    尽管“耕田”有限，但员工们对该公司的“胜利菜园”及这整个理念热情无限高涨。有专家指出，有公司扶持的员工菜园成长迅速，因此无论小公司还是《财富》美国500强（Fortune 500）大企业，都纷纷踊跃尝试。

    “据非正式统计，很多指标都在增长。”人力资源经理人协会（Society of Human Resource Managers）的在线编辑内容经理史蒂夫•贝茨如是说。

    在过去几年，有多少菜园出现在员工停车场旁，出现在办公区花园的角落，是个无人知晓的问题，但可以确定的是，伴之成长的是企业对员工健康的关注，以及为员工提供低成本福利的努力。

    “‘种菜’是一举多得的”，园艺爱好者兼园艺书作家贝茨说：“公司不惜成本，把员工拉去户外搞团队建设活动，或出高价聘请权威顾问，与公司支持员工菜园，买种子辟田地，此两举其实功效无异。”

    尝试员工菜园的公司有：美国明尼苏达州的蓝十字蓝盾（Blue Cross Blue Shield），美国百特国际有限公司（Baxter International），谷歌公司（Google），美国西南航空公司（Southwest Airlines）以及切萨皮克能源公司（Chesapeake Energy）等。其中，切萨皮克能源公司旗下的300多名员工在奥克拉荷马城总部附近开辟了一整块土地种植蔬菜。

    全美园艺协会（National Gardening Association）表示，越来越多的美国人投入到开垦自家菜园的运动中。预估表明，2010年，约有四千万美国家庭打算自种水果、蔬菜或是花草，较两年前增长了10%。

    对于有些人来说，离会议室举步之遥的一小块地，正好可以让他们出来透透气，浇一浇地里的豆苗后，再回去加个班完成项目。一些人甚至会在周末带着家人一起来耕种，而另外一些人则通过员工互助课程学习园艺。

    工作在惠普（Hewlett Packard）温哥华分公司的员工，大多住在公寓楼里，所以公司的“耕田”成了他们满足“耕种瘾”的“金土地”。惠普发言人称，公司菜园开垦于28年前，其规模在最近几年增加了一倍。

    菜园耕作可以培养团队意识，可以锻炼毅力，这些在办公室工作中也是难能可贵的。

    今年，在切萨皮克能源公司，上百名员工志愿参与新员工菜园的开垦，他们足够照料2英亩员工菜园里的65个花圃。该天然气公司员工菜园的协调人凯瑟琳.J.古德温介绍，“去年，员工菜园播种得很晚，后来又遭受冰雹袭击，冰雹大得如同垒球，我们不得已重新播种，可此后又遇大洪水，洪水淹了我们的菜园，我们只有再次从零开始。”

    教训：振作精神从头再来。秋天是收获的季节，员工菜园收获了丰硕的秋葵菜和番薯，其中300磅的收成捐赠给了提供免费食品的慈善机构。

    对园艺的热爱会在同事间相互感染。今年，切萨皮克能源公司的员工打算在这个季初播种，而且他们已经种了洋葱、豌豆和土豆。

    “他们急不可待地想在菜园里采摘西红柿。我们很兴奋，我们也准备好了。”古德温说。

    公司菜园帮助员工在工作和生活中获得平衡，以前的“快，快，工作”，变成了现在的“出去晒晒太阳，种种地”，古德温说。

    在员工调查中，切萨皮克员工说他们很珍视在“耕作”中建立的友谊与默契。这种同志情谊在其他的公司菜园里同样可见。

    “这种做法肯定会把各种不同群体人员团结到一起”，天伯伦的布莱斯德尔说。

    天伯伦总部拥有700名员工，许多员工以前都互不相识，是一起汲水的田间劳动使他们相识。较之以前每早9点，自助餐厅里的视而不见，现在的他们，却会在餐厅特设农产品柜台一起挑选最美的小花束、紫苏或者蔬菜。

    “他们转来转去的”等待着农产品上架，她说，“新剪下的花朵总是转眼间便一抢而空。这些花朵照亮了办公室”。

    利他主义是公司菜园的另一大收获。天伯伦的员工在自助餐厅特设柜台购买自耕小农产品，获得的收入用于帮助位于新罕布什尔州的一个“食物银行”，大部分员工菜园都是这样运作的。

    天伯伦员工可以抽出40小时带薪社区服务时间中的一部分用于照料花朵与蔬菜。其它公司中，员工可以用自由支配时间照料菜园，比如在午饭时间、上班前或下班后。

    在培养了团队合作精神与问题解决能力的同时，总部在明尼苏达州的一家传媒与市场营销公司——哈伯曼，正利用菜园发展企业、招贤纳才。该公司与一些有机食品相关组织开展业务，现有客户和潜在客户还能收到该公司的自耕农产品。哈伯曼甚至还创建了一个名为employergardens.com的网站。

    “我们招募到很多有识之士，他们获悉了我们公司的菜园并称‘我想在这里工作’。他们非常优秀……这正可以吸引我们需要的人才，” 哈伯曼的合伙人兼公司菜园负责人利兹•莫利兹•奥托说。

    奥托在收到客户的感谢信后说，她“知道了我们正在干一件了不起的事”，而一名入职不久的新员工在与她一起在菜园耕作时说，“能有401K养老金，那可真棒！但我更爱我们的菜园。你们正在把食物放在我的餐桌上，这对我实在意义非凡。”

    The employee gardens at Timberland's Stratham, N.H., headquarters are eating up the lawns and sprouting new sections. Fruit trees were planted in a roundabout in front last fall, and a big arbor for native grape varieties will go in sometime this year. Next year, the shady patch behind Timberland's leased offices could become a blueberry patch.

    "We're going to run out of space pretty quickly," says Betsy Blaisdell, senior manager of environmental stewardship at Timberland (TBL), maker of boots, shoes and other outdoor gear.

    Space may be sparse, but enthusiasm runs high for Timberland's Victory Garden, and for the overall concept. Corporate-backed employee gardens are growing like weeds, experts say, with small firms and Fortune 500 companies both buying topsoil and seeds.

    "Anecdotally, there's a lot of indicators that it is increasing," says Steve Bates, manager of online editorial content at the Society of Human Resource Managers.

    While no one has a good count on the number of gardens planted next to employer parking lots and in corners of office parks in the last couple of years, growth has been fueled largely by growing interest in employee wellness and an effort to give workers a low-cost benefit.

    "It hits a lot of themes," says Bates, an avid gardener and author of a gardening book. "Companies pay tons of money for off-site team-building things, or bring in high-paid, high-powered consultants. They accomplish the same things with seeds and a strip of land."

    Among the companies growing vegetables are Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota, Baxter International (BAX), Google (GOOG), Southwest Airlines (LUV) and Chesapeake Energy (CHK), where more than 300 employees tend a full block of gardens near its Oklahoma City headquarters.

    Gardening in general is on a growth path. An estimated 40 million American households planned to grew fruits, vegetables or herbs in 2010, an increase of more than 10% from just two years ago, according to the National Gardening Association.

    For some, having a plot just a stone's throw away from their conference room may give them a reason to stay late and finish a project after watering their pea patch. Some even bring their family with them to garden on the weekends; others learn to garden at employer-sponsored classes.

    A number of Hewlett Packard's (HPQ) Vancouver-based employees live in apartments, so the company's plot is one of the few venues where they can dig into the earth. The company's gardens, established 28 years ago, have doubled in size in the last few years, according to an HP spokesperson.

    Working in the garden can offer lessons about teamwork and persistence that are highly applicable to the office.

    At Chesapeake Energy, hundreds of employees signed up to volunteer in the new employee gardens this year, enough to tend 65 raised garden beds spread over two acres. The garden project got off to a late start last year, and they were hit by "a huge hailstorm, softball-size hail," recalls Kathryn J. Goodwin, employee garden coordinator at the natural gas company. "We had to replant. Then we had a major flood, it drowned our garden. So we replanted a second time."

    The lesson: Pick yourself up and go at it again. The major harvest came in during the fall, with plentiful okra and enough sweet potatoes to donate 300 pounds to the food pantry.

    The enthusiasm for gardening with coworkers can be contagious. This year, at Chesapeake Energy, staffers will begin to plant earlier in the season, and they have already planted onions, peas and potatoes.

    "They're chomping at the bit to get their tomatoes in the garden. We're excited. We're ready," Goodwin says.

    The gardens help employees achieve a semblance of work-life balance. They can offset the "go, go, work, work" ethic with a "get outside in the sunshine" and dig in the earth approach, Goodwin says.

    In staff surveys, Chesapeake employees say they appreciate the friendships and workplace relationships they have built on their gardening teams. That sense of camaraderie and connection permeates at other corporate gardens too.

    "This definitely brings together a diverse group of people," says Timberland's Blaisdell.

    With 700 people working at Timberland's headquarters, many employees didn't know each other before picking up watering cans together. Or they may meet at the farm stand in the cafeteria at around 9 a.m. in search of the perfect posies or basil or vegetables.

    "They hover," waiting for the produce, she says. "Cut flowers are always gone in an instant. It lights up the office."

    Altruism is another big draw to the company garden. Timberland staff buy produce at a little farm stand in their cafeteria, and proceeds support a food bank in New Hampshire -- a fairly common approach for employee gardens.

    Timberland employees may use some of their 40 hours of paid community service time to tend the flowers and vegetables. At other companies, employees go to the gardens on their own time -- lunch hours, before or after work.

    Along with cultivating teamwork and problem-solving, Haberman, a Minnesota-based media and marketing firm, uses its garden as a business development and recruiting tool. The company does business with a number of organic food related organizations, and current and potential clients receive some of the bounty. Haberman even developed a website called employergardens.com.

    "We get a lot of people who read about the garden and say 'I want to work here.' They're great people…. You're going to draw the people that you want on your team," says Liz Morris Otto, a partner and chief garden officer at Haberman.

    Otto says she "knew we were really onto something" after receiving thank-you notes from clients, and after a new employee, while tending the garden with her, said, "It's great that we have a 401(k), but I love our vegetable garden. You're putting food on my table -- and that's really important to me."