Most of the 1,600 employees toiling inside a converted warehouse at the foot of the Cambie Bridge in Vancouver are techies who build complex business software.
Starting this August, they'll also be farmers.
Business Objects, a tech company that designs computer programs for the likes of Ben and Jerry's and Mark's Work Wearhouse, is bringing agriculture to the workplace. The company is in the middle of transforming an old rooftop parking lot into an employee-cultivated fruit and vegetable garden it hopes will both perk up and feed weary workers.
"This is really taking the rooftop garden to the next level," said Alison Van Buuren, a manager at the company.
Commercial buildings in Canada have been sprouting green roofs - eco-friendly spreads of inedible grass and ferns that retain building heat and water - for decades, Vancouver's 30-year-old Law Courts building and the Ottawa campus of the National Research Council being just two prominent examples.
But the garden planned for the Yaletown office of Business Objects will join a small but budding group of workplace gardens that can yield a decent green salad.
Two years ago, Nature's Path, an organic food producer, opened a number of plots on the roof of its Richmond, B.C., headquarters. Each department cultivates a bed. The harvest consists of squash, pumpkins, corn, beans, carrots, broccoli and tomatoes.
"It's very therapeutic," said Dag Falck, organic-program manager, who dirties his hands in the beds at least twice a month.
"It's so hard to connect how something grows from seed, and yet it's a valuable process to understand, especially [in] our business."
The garden has so charmed the president of Nature's Path that his employees know to head straight for the roof when he's late for meetings.
Last year, The Costume Lady, a small outfitter of ballerinas and figure skaters in Colorado Springs, Colo., installed 17 vegetable beds that yielded so much produce that the owner was literally giving it away - a free zucchini with every purchase of a tutu.
"I go out and just eat peas right off the vine for my lunch," Costume Lady owner Susi Hubbs said. "Or a few of us will go out and pick a salad or find something to add to a sandwich."
At Business Objects, employees have a bounty of options for on-the-job therapy. Employees can pass downtime contorting in a yoga room or blissing out in a massage room. For any pent-up energy there are kickboxing classes and table-tennis and video-game setups. A staff-led "Green Team" suggests new environmental initiatives for the company. But last year a few employees decided they needed one more diversion: office-grown food.
A landscaping team will build and shape the garden, but the company expects that staff will eventually take over the plots, which should help ease the stress of long days at the office.
The company originally planned to install a herb garden inside the building. But that idea wilted when planners realized the office climate would probably kill most herbs.
That's when garden advocates at the company started eyeing a patch of gravel outside the office's second floor.
"We had to [ask] the city to see if they would let us do it," said Bill Rinsma, director of worldwide real estate and facilities for Business Objects. "But they were quite receptive."
He plans to have the garden finished within three months.
Office food gardens would be new to urban agriculture experts. "It's a fantastic idea," said Michael Levenston, executive director of City Farmer, a Canadian promoter of urban agriculture. "It's quite surprising we don't see more of it."
The only contentious issue remaining for Business Objects' horticultural endeavour? What exactly to grow. Employees have already agreed on strawberries and grapes, but not much else.
"We haven't decided on everything yet," Ms. Van Buuren said. "It's a very democratic workplace, so there could be some debate."
