Erin Virgil, a 24-year-old clerical worker at the New York State Transportation Department, thought she had found an excellent way to make cooking more appealing: She would grow her own herbs — parsley, dill and basil — at the office, thereby inspiring herself to cook more when she got home.
In early March, she gathered up coffee cans and milk cartons, purchased a misting bottle, and bought humus and coffee grounds — all to nurture little seeds. Within weeks, though, the cool temperature of the office air and the lack of light from her office window, which is blocked by another part of the building, had killed the plants.
Virgil tried again, planting more half-and-half cartons and watering vigilantly. By mid-April, the herbs were doing well. But they soon stopped growing and began to wilt. Possibly the office temperature was to blame. Possibly the fault lay with a colleague, Bill, who had a bad habit of emptying his hot coffee into the plants. In any case, Virgil started giving the plants to co-workers, who took them to their more flora-friendly homes.
"It was a sad reminder that I should never again attempt to garden at the office," she says, recalling that colleagues had warned her that "nothing can grow in this lifeless government agency."
But Virgil should take heart: Not much, it seems, can grow in nongovernmental agencies either. As one of mankind's most synthetic creations, the workplace is anathema to nature — with the exception, of course, of the vermin and predatory colleagues that thrive there.
Windows in countless offices can't be opened or are routinely shaded to prevent glare. Sources of water are always too far down some hallway. Fertilizers, spread by well-meaning colleagues when no one's looking, may actually be dangerous. Then there is the office air, which everyone knows is an unworthy substitute for the real thing.
In fact, the workplace can be as stressful to plants as it is to humans. According to Thomas Weiler, a professor of horticulture at Cornell University, there's usually less humidity and light there than in the home, and the fluctuations in temperature are greater. Even worse, he says, in many cases the plant is not "a personal plant so it's everyone's responsibility and no one's responsibility."
Despite these hurdles, even the most challenged nongardeners among us occasionally succumb to the hope that something organic will be able to survive at work. Or we're seduced by studies, including one from Washington State University, that show that plants help reduce stress, increase productivity and improve attentiveness. Or we just have a penchant for the oxygen that plants emit.
So for all of you optimists out there, hard-to-kill plants include the corn plant (a dracaena), the peace lily and pothos, says John Mini, the founder of an indoor landscaping business in Congers, N.Y. The dumbest plants to grow at work: orchids; most flowering plants, which "are nearly impossible under artificial light"; and areca palms, which "fail almost immediately," he says.
"The No. 1 reason people have trouble keeping a plant is that they kill it with kindness," usually by overwatering it, Mini adds. That's particularly dangerous in the workplace because plants require less water when they're getting less light, he says.
Stephanie Hamberger blames bureaucracy for the death last year of her African violet, whom she had named Lavinia after one of Shakespeare's many tragic figures. Though she's an accomplished gardener who grows her own vegetables, Hamberger worried from the start that the plant wouldn't survive the poor lighting and stale air at her office. In fact, Lavinia lasted only six weeks, dying while Hamberger was on vacation. Her cube mate had taken Lavinia for walks outside and had left lights on all night, but, Hamberger says, she was so excited to be doing something that didn't involve red tape that she overwatered the plant.
Drew Eisenhauer, a business analyst at a government contractor, had a bad track record with office plants until he gained custody of the two his ex-girlfriend had won at a church auction. He brought them into the office last Christmas, hoping they would disappear like leftover birthday cake.
They didn't, but the lack of air conditioning over the weekend left them wilted by Monday. So he and his colleagues started dousing them with leftover bottled water and Sprite. Since then, the plants have grown so much they have had to be divided. In fact, "in the last month," says Eisenhauer, "they've actually bloomed!"
But the job of keeping plants alive does carry risks. William Jarrett, a producer for a nonprofit media company, once had a boss who tended to orchids, which flourished. "But he was let go because he didn't do anything except try to keep those suckers alive," Jarrett says. As an alternative, Jarrett recommends a pot of fake poinsettias. They thrive at work, he says.