Green is the colour for the workplace

Pioneers in this venture in Pune, Green Fingers presently caters to an environment-conscious corporate clientele of 110 offices, all secured not by any marketing gimmicks, but simply word of mouth, says proprietor Vidya Vishwanathan, who started out in ’85 with an investment of only Rs 65.

From the most favoured areca palms, reeds, cycus palms, rhododendrons, dresinas, rubber plants to `song of India,’ ordered on demand from Bangalore and Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum), are rented out by nurseries, for as little as Rs 5 per plant per month to Rs 80 or Rs 100, (depending on the size and variety) – for a negligible profit.

“The profit margin is not worth mentioning,” says Neelam Seolekar of Green Garden who also offers these services to residential homes. Some nurseries grudgingly put it between 5-10 per cent, though the foray of multinational corporations into Pune has left nurseries struggling to cope with a market they are ill-equipped to cater to.

The constraints range from stubbornly low rental rates as compared to Mumbai, spiralling transport costs due to hikes in fuel prices that restrict their market area, collective bargaining forcing cuts in prices, to high plant mortality rates because of sudden, adverse climatic changes.

With temperatures in Pune soaring beyond 40 degrees, small nurseries are often forced to shut shop during summers, while delicate plants cannot sustain unseasonal showers or severe winters. Centrally air-conditioned offices and poor lighting deprive plants of their natural moisture content – making it a financially unviable business by itself.

“It is very difficult to make money solely through plant libraries, since they are only a secondary business,” says Vidya, though they demand a minimum of 12 hours on the job every day. “We use this this branch of our enterprise to contribute toward environmental awareness.”

“Unless landscaping, irrigation and plant sales are the main areas of your enterprise, sustaining a plant library is far from lucrative,” says Shreenivas Badhrayani of Green Mek Plants and Irrigation, a line on every nursery proprietor’s lips. Expenses are increasing with most offices going centrally air-conditioned, which require `soil-less’ plants that need liquid nutrients.

And offices are not always the friendliest homes for plants. “Banks are overcrowded, with poor lighting and ventilation, and spitting on leaves is one of the worst hazards for our plants,” says Surekha Pathak of Green Glory, adding that sometimes payments do not come through for nearly a month.

A business largely managed by ladies, the only investments required, beyond plant collections, are a vehicle, a minimum of two employees for every four offices, and primarily an instinctive environmental inclination, preferably as strong as Neelam’s who says she “could easily live in a garden all her life!”