As the days pass and we quickly adapt to the new way of living, there are some days being cocooned in our homes and gardens with our loved ones that we feel safe and protected. But it won’t be long before most people will know of a life lost, or a livelihood destroyed by the Coronavirus pandemic.
The sanctuary of the garden space
This reality is never far from our minds at Evergreen Garden Care. The safety and wellbeing of our employees, retailers, agencies and supplier partners is our upmost priority. But remarkably, in the midst of this pandemic, the garden space has become a vital part of day-to-day life. It offers families, high-risk individuals, teenagers and children a precious place to help process, cope and distract from the current situation. More than ever people are trying gardening for the first time or trying new gardening projects.
Control Measures
For these reason's Evergreen Garden Care has put in place a number of different measures and initiatives to continue serving our customers and maintain business as best as possible, whilst safeguarding employees wellbeing. We have introduced best practices to maintain 2m social distancing at our 3 UK factories (Howden, Hatfield and Gretna), our distribution centres and at our research and development station - Levington. This has included:
• Shift patterns altered to increase separation at work
• Start and finish times staggered to reduce overlap
• One-way systems
• Slowing operating manufacturing lines
We have invested in more regular cleaning and disinfecting in all areas and shared equipment, put in place Perspex screens as well as voluntary temperature checks for all workers at these sites. This has ensured we can maintain manufacturing and distribution but with reduced capacity and thus to ensure supply we have focused on the key selling lines.
Where products are unavailable, we are offering alternatives in the means of different pack sizes, formats, variant or brand. We appreciate this will result in gaps in their deliveries but we are doing our upmost to find a solution to continue to service in challenging circumstances.
At the beginning of the month as Garden Centres closed due to government guidelines, 28 of our team members went on the government furlough scheme, many of which included our sales representatives, but we have retained a smaller team to continue to support this channel. The global executive and UK leadership team members have also taken a 20% pay cut.
Supporting the Category
We have taken the decision to continue to invest in marketing support, but we have adapted the plans to inspire, challenge and enable all gardeners to successfully complete their gardening projects. Miracle-Gro will run on TV, Video on Demand and digital campaign throughout April and May, whilst our social media will continue to produce content that help people grow from seed, grow their own or offer help and advice to get started. We are continuing to work with renowned horticulturist David Domoney to produce content that is supportive and practical in this situation.
The Future
We know that things are not going to be straightforward as we all adapt to the new normal and we’re looking to the future to see how we can play our part to helping to rebuild communities and to support our people and customers when we come out of this immediate phase.
These are challenging times for everyone and our heartfelt appreciation goes out to all those who are working so tirelessly in so many professions to protect the health and wellbeing of our nation.
From all at Evergreen Garden Care, please stay safe and we commit to continuing to extend our help to you at this time.