Stewarts Office Plants

We supply many businesses across the South, from Sussex and Surrey, through Hampshire and Dorset to Wiltshire and Somerset. For more information about the services we offer visit our home page, or contact us here. In this blog you'll find news, interesting snippets, stories and pictures of our staff's adventures out on the road.

Monday, July 01, 2013

Next time you go shopping, look up...

...because you may not have noticed the plants up above you.

I've mentioned this job before - once a year we go in and remove all these high level plants from a shopping centre in Southampton, clean them at our greenhouse, then return the next day.

This is complicated by the need to be in and out before all the other staff arrive (so we get to site at 0500 both days), and the fact that there is no direct way into these overhead balconies for the adjacent shop floor; we have to go out on to the roof and climb over a load of service ducts then go in through the little hatches you can see on the left. Oh, and we have to be hooked up to a safety line and wear harnesses (Stewarts take working-at-height safety seriously).

Our predecessors on this maintenance contract used to clean the plants in situ apparently. I'm sure that was a lot easier for them, but the plants get so dirty, I can't help imagining the rest of the shopping centre got covered in dust as a result.

Thankfully we've timed it now so that we go in near to the longest day, as climbing over the roof in the dark is not fun - looks bright and sunny in this picture? It's still 0530! So the least we ask is that in return for our efforts, some shoppers at least look up and notice that the plants are actually there.

Jonathan