The Royal Bank of Scotland’s (RBS) American head office is in Stamford Connecticut. The ultra-modern facility features a massive third story terrace, facing east, looking direct out to the Atlantic Ocean.
In 2011, a kitchen garden was constructed on the terrace, consisting of 50 sub-irrigated growing boxes, to provide daily produce to RBS’ up-scale cafeterias. The chefs were trained how to maximize yields using Caja on the terrace, right outside the kitchen door. The chefs have been maintaining the garden ever since, because of the minimal labour and watering required to manage the garden.
In October 2012, the RBS garden was profoundly tested — Hurricane Sandy barrelled in along the New England coastline. Sandy’s impact was devastating for many communities and for local gardens. After the hurricane, Jason di Chiara, the director responsible for the RBS installation, gave a status update on the boxes saying “There were no problems. We just drained the water from the containers ahead of Sandy, picked them up, and moved them inside. No losses.”
Many gardens fail because they lack flexibility. At RBS, a more traditional garden (e.g. raised beds) would have been completely destroyed. Yet, the RBS team were able to simply move their garden indoors until the threat has passed. A day after the worst hurricane in the area’s history, the garden site was in operation again.
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