“Oh, you like to garden? You have to join this group!”

Lisa Lendway, a principal data scientist at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, says those words were spoken to her at a work meeting. That was all it took for her to get involved with the Blue Cross Community Giving Garden.

Planting in the garden for the 2023 season got underway in late May. The variety of vegetables grown in the garden changes every year and ranges from 30-40 different crops. Lendway spent her first visit of the year planting collard greens and extracting asparagus roots.

“I love the beginning of the season when we’re planting things,” she said. “Then in August, to come back and harvest is so fun and rewarding. The middle of the season is like, well, I guess we’ll weed some more!”

Growing a Giving Garden

Lendway is one of many associates to participate in this labor of love over the years which started 16 years ago with a random lunchbreak walk through a Blue Cross parking lot.

Associates Magda Surrisi, Susan Brousseau and Joan Barrett looked at the acres of grass adjacent to their office building and asked each other, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could do something with that space that could also give back to the community?”

From that moment on, the seed was planted for a new kind of use for corporate green space.

Plans for a garden were quickly put into place, with all work being managed through Blue Cross volunteers. What started as a 1,600 square-foot plot has since grown to 3,200 square feet.

Each year, the garden typically has about 50-60 associate volunteers tending to everything from staples like tomatoes and cucumbers to colorful additions like radishes, okra and Romanesco broccoli. Over the years, the Blue Cross Community Giving Garden has donated harvests to non-profit organizations, such as Lewis House, Open Door Food Shelf and the Department of Indian Work.

As most gardeners will attest, no two growing seasons are the same. Some tough seasons in the Giving Garden have yielded under 50 pounds, while other years generated bumper crops of over 1,500 pounds.

There have been a range of challenges over the years, including snacking voles and rabbits; extreme weather; and very recently, a pandemic that required special efforts to keep the garden going while people worked from home.

“In 2020 during the height of the pandemic, we had over double the number of usual associate volunteers come out to help us deliver on our commitment to provide healthy food to those in need in our community," says Magda Surrisi, director of implementation and strategic execution at Blue Cross. "It was so heartwarming to see."

Making memories

Blue Cross is in the process of relocating from its main headquarters building, which means this will be the garden’s last season in its original location. This has Surrisi, a founding member of the garden, looking back at the last 16 years of memories.

“Some of those first years, we used to have people who would adopt a crop – so people would say in a meeting, ‘I’m the potato guy,’ or, ‘I’m peppers!’ They would make little placards with their crops and put them on the tables. It was a fun way to get to know people,” Surrisi said.

For Surrisi, the garden also brings back memories of associates who fell in love with the garden but are no longer with us. Jake Lavoie, a company intern who passed away in 2019 soon after spending the summer with Blue Cross, is honored with a placard on the fence of the garden.

And Susan Brousseau, one of the garden’s co-founders, is now remembered with a picnic table that sits inside the garden and invites visitors to take a seat and start up a conversation.

“Susan was known for her innate ability to bring good people together to do good things, so the table is a fitting memorial to honor her,” Surrisi says.

What’s next

As Blue Cross moves its main headquarters to its River Park buildings, associates are hopeful the garden can put down new roots as well. Surrisi says the committee is currently scoping out potential sites for 2024.

Whatever the future holds for the garden, this patch of tilled soil has been a bright spot in the 90-year history of Blue Cross.

Learn more

Are you looking for the ultimate onsite volunteer project for your employees? Team gatherings in the garden to plant, weed, water, and harvest offer a unique way to make a difference by growing healthy fresh produce for hungry neighbors.

Learn more by reviewing our Giving Garden Getting Started Fact Sheet https://lnkd.in/gPD5QGm