We value community. And we're always thinking about it — when we are planning for a new building on campus with native plants in mind or when we are clearing walkways of snow and ice for pedestrians. Most of all, even as a commercial landscape company, we work to keep things local.
The Community section of the B Impact Assessment evaluates a company’s engagement with and impact on the communities in which it operates, hires from, and sources from. It covers everything from diversity, equity & inclusion, and economic impact to civic engagement, charitable giving, and supply chain management.
Because community is core to who we are, many of the evaluation’s checkpoints were things we already do — if not embedded in policy, in spirit. We are locally owned and prioritize local (and women-owned and led) vendors. We invite students, community leaders, and peers to visit our headquarters to learn about green infrastructure. But we are most proud of our giveback program, 10% for the Community.
Since the very beginning, we have donated 10% of our profits in the form of in-kind donations to local nonprofits. Through this program, we have given hundreds of thousands of dollars to organizations in our community focusing on reducing hunger, increasing access to art, improving our environment, and more.
Our original intention for the program was to relieve the overhead cost of landscaping for organizations doing good work in the community so that they could allocate those resources to their work. Today, our goal is to deepen that impact — shifting our focus to planting more trees for our nonprofit partners because planting trees is the single more environmentally impactful service we can provide for our community.
We are also leaders of the smart landscaping movement. We consider it a responsibility to our community to educate others about the importance of smart landscaping. We’ve hosted over 2,000 educators, students, design and landscape professionals, and community members at our Lexington headquarters for learning opportunities.
We’ve set goals to recruit more through organizations that serve individuals from underrepresented populations and to anonymously survey employees on gender identity, race/ethnicity, disability status, and other demographic factors to track the diversity of our workforce.
We want the work we do to improve the community we live in, for all of us. To learn more about our efforts and the nonprofits we serve, check out our 10% for the Community program. To see how you can help, learn about the native plants that improve quality of life for our environment and our neighbors.
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