Success Story of Community Gardening in a Private Company

It is heartening to see a different feature written on community gardening that was published in Straits Times Life! section on 29 Mar 2009. Most of us are well aware that community gardening is an activity that is prevalent in schools and both private and public residential estates.

What was different this time was that article written by Andrew Tan reported an example of a company that has a successful and thriving gardening club. Yokogawa Singapore was the company that was highlighted. It is quite surprising to know that employees of Yokogawa Singapore can actually commit themselves to garden as a group at their workplace. 

This is highly admirable because it is difficult to imagine how a gardening club in a company can actually take off because everyone would be too tired after a long day’s worth of work to find time to do community gardening. Whatever time that is left after office hours and in the weekends are precious to most people as they would want use that time to rest, recharge or be with friends and family members. After work hours and weekends are indeed important to some people who just cannot wait to get out of the office to avoid facing their colleagues and bosses!

Set up two years ago, the efforts put in by Yokogawa Singapore paid off when they won a gold award in last year’s Community in Bloom award. In their factory premises in Bedok South, staff that form the gardening club collective help to tend to the large number of plants that are grown in a xeric garden, two different Japanese themed roof-top gardens and a vegetable and herb garden.

For a community garden at a workplace to work, it is important that the management sees the value of allowing such an activity to take place in its premises. Besides financial support that needs to be given for start-up, the company may also consider granting a short span of a few hours during a week during office hours so that employees can go to work in the garden.