Plant Power Month

We celebrated Plant Power Month in April, inspired by National Gardening Week (27th April to 5th May). We spent the month taking cuttings of plants, growing vegetables, making seed bombs, and taking pictures of our plants.

Plant Power Month was a great success. We loved seeing EVORians posting their green babies on the Wellbeing channel on Teams and sharing how their plant projects at home were doing.

As well as providing oxygen, plants can also lower stress and anxiety, reduce fatigue, and improve your mood. Plus it’s loads of fun watching them grow! No matter the space you have, there is always an opportunity to get green-fingered. From vegetable cuttings to windowsill plants, you can get your daily dose of vitamin green, which has a huge impact on your mental health, wellbeing and on your step counter.

See below for what we did in the office!

Eco-Grow Set

We kicked off the month by sending out eco-grow kits to ten volunteers. These included ‘a taste of Italy’, ‘vibrant vegetables’ and ‘herb a’licious’. The seeds take some time to get going, so we won’t know for a while yet who has grown the best vegetable or herbs from the kits. We loved that the kits were eco-friendly too.

Vegetables in the office

We decided to show everyone how easy it is to ‘recycle’ the vegetables and fruit stones that we would normally not think twice about composting. It was great seeing how these scraps could get a second lease of life and it felt amazing doing it.

Our office garden included spring onions, garlic, basil, mint, celery, chilli seeds, and avocado seeds. After 5 weeks, our garlic has shot up to 55cm and our chilli seeds a much smaller inch of growth.

We are super impressed by the growth of all the vegetables and herbs, and delighted with how far they’ve come in such a small amount of time.

After posting about our avocado seeds, we found out that one of our team has been growing avocado plants for over ten years, which look amazing and so big! Definitely worth the wait and the patience that goes into growing them.

Seed Bomb Workshop

A huge thank you to the ladies of Wilder for leading a Seed Bomb Workshop in our London office. We had 12 staff come along to learn how to make seed bombs and spend the hour creating and wrapping them.

Seed bombs, or ‘earth dumplings’ were used in guerrilla gardening in the 1970’s, but go back hundreds of years in Japanese agriculture. They are a great way of spreading seeds in a large area that are protected from birds by the clay outer shell. Once it rains, the clay dissolves and the seeds, which by this point has already germinated, are safe from birds and well on their way to growing up.

As well as helping with wellbeing, the seed bomb workshop felt like a great team bonding experience. Everyone was getting their hands dirty and talking shop. With the busy season ahead for a lot of us, it was great that everyone could come together and switch off.

Plant Cuttings

To end the month, we planted everything that we had grown or taken cuttings from. We felt like proud mamas when our little seeds and cuttings that we had tended to the whole month were big enough to be potted and sent home with new mamas and papas. We couldn’t believe how many pots we could fill with cuttings!

We’ve really enjoyed getting our hands dirty for Plant Power Month and would highly recommend others to get out in nature and see what they can grow at home. We’ve proved you don’t need a lot of space and that with enough patience you can surprise yourself with what you can grow.