Green savers: A saviour of office plants during the lockdown

Plants are living beings. So they need nutrition, minerals, and water on a regular basis. If they are indoor plants, they certainly need special care.

What happens when plants' maintenance gets interrupted? They will die for sure.

Due to the prolonged general holidays to stem the spread of coronavirus, many commercial facilities with indoor, rooftop, vertical, or lawn gardens are now closed. The executives are now doing office work from home while the gardeners are on leave.

Here, the Green Savers – a green campaigner organisation - has come forward to provide the plants with care at more than 150 offices in Dhaka city. Foreign embassies, private banks, and non-government organisations are among the service takers.

During the pandemic, at least 12 members of Green Savers–all trained agriculturists and gardeners, have been looking after the gardens' maintenance.    

Ahsan Rony, president of Green Savers, told The Business Standard that in the pre-pandemic time, the Green Savers teams provided garden maintenance services once a week to their clients. Now the services continue weeklong. 

On the eve of March 26 when the government started implementing general holiday, the clients' indoor plants were brought outside from enclosures so that the teams could take care of them. Moreover, the offices owning rooftop, vertical, and lawn gardens have given the teams the necessary access for working.

There are varieties of plants like monstera, philodendron, dieffenbachia, Chinese evergreen, palm, dracaena, alocasia, and anthurium for indoor gardening. The plants, though kept for beautification purposes, can also absorb excess heat from the atmosphere.

Rony said, "Like poultry birds, the indoor plants need special care when they are brought to outdoor premises. During monsoon, the plants are prone to get diseases. So we use the necessary medicines. Commonly we do pruning, weeding, and irrigate the plants."

Green Savers offer paid services. For a day's service to corporate offices, the organisation charges Tk425 for the costs of pesticides, fertilizer, and the plant doctor's fee.

Since February this year, the Turkish Embassy in Dhaka gave charge of maintaining its indoor and outdoor gardens to Green Savers. As office activities became limited due to shutdown, the gardening service has become very crucial.

The Embassy's maintenance supervisor Rakib Khan, said, "During the shutdown, we don't need to worry about our plants. Green Savers have taken the responsibility of the garden and plants. Their team does maintenance regularly and we are satisfied with their service."

Indoor horticulture is a trend in modern-day green campaigns.

Green Savers launched its indoor plant maintenance services for corporate offices in 2011, after one year of the organisation's establishment.

Rony recalled that many offices bought plants for beautification, but couldn't take care of them due to lack of maintenance staff.

"We decided to offer our services to some offices. We told them not to worry about the plants' maintenance, which we are here to do. The only thing they need to buy is saplings," Rony said.