Lewis Ginter workers protest against 'low pay,' 'unsafe' working conditions

As Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden prepares to unveil its $31-million expansion project in just less than a month, workers are still fiercely fighting for higher pay and better benefits in what has been a year-and-a-half-long negotiation process.

On April 21, about 20 to 25 garden workers – mostly horticulturists – stood outside Lewis Ginter’s entrance gates with signs saying, “LIVING WAGES NOW” and “NO WORKERS, NO GARDEN,” as cars streamed in for the first “Groovin’ in the Garden” concert of the spring. Just the night before, final negotiations between the workers and upper management over wages “did not go well,” workers said.

At the negotiation, garden workers – represented by their union, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers – asked management for an across-the-board raise of $3.50 an hour. But management offered raises of only 2%, workers said. For most workers, with horticulturists making $17-24 an hour and assistant horticulturists making $15-17 an hour, a 2% raise would equal around 30-40 cents an hour.

“A 30-cent raise, that’s nothing. It’s just really disappointing. And really insulting and disrespectful to us,” said Cody Hagerman, an assistant horticulturist. “They rely really heavily on our labor, and they don’t want to pay us for that labor. They’re saying no to almost all of our asks.”

Through their union representatives, garden workers have made several requests of management: higher wages, a clothing stipend for horticulturists, better safety equipment, a stipend for working in hazardous conditions, an extra floating holiday, and parental leave.

Management has responded to some of the demands – forming a safety committee and offering three weeks of maternity leave and one week of paternity leave – but has denied the remaining asks, workers said. Following the protest, more than 300 community members from the Central Virginia area have signed a petition advocating that Lewis Ginter agree to workers' requests.

Since Lewis Ginter management is actively in the midst of union negotiations, garden leaders cannot give interviews with media, said Chief Marketing and Experience Officer Mary Heather Parch. But Parch said that the garden has offered four pay raises to all staff over the past five years, averaging at a 5.25% pay increase per year.

“Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden is aware that a small portion of our staff was demonstrating outside the garden property recently, as is their right,” Parch said. ‘We continue to negotiate with the IAM Union in good faith during our ongoing collective bargaining process.

“The garden is a special place to work and we will continue to do everything we can to invest in our staff – without comprising the garden’s future or our mission,” she said.

'What we're asking for isn't unreasonable'

But staffers have said that the garden has not offered any raises for the past two years, with management arguing that it cannot offer pay increases due to ongoing union negotiations. 

Garden workers voted to unionize about a year-and-a-half ago – with 75% of the vote. Out of Lewis Ginter’s staff of about 110 people, about70 workers (those who work in non-managerial and non-security roles) are eligible for the union.

After a year-and-a-half, management has still not finalized a union contract with workers, which staffers say has been due to garden management “dragging their feet.”

“What we’re asking for isn’t unreasonable. For the vast majority of the people, the least that they’re hoping for is just an excuse to keep working here,” said maintenance coordinator Lucas Jacoby. “Everybody’s willing to take lesser pay than they could get elsewhere to work here. But when you’re not getting a raise for two years, and inflation is how it is – we all want to stay here, but we can’t unless we get a raise.”

The average pay for horticulturists in Virginia ranges from $21 to $28 per hour, but garden staff say that even some longtime workers at Lewis Ginter still earn only $20 or $21 per hour.

Horticulturists, a department of about 25 people at Lewis Ginter, are the main caretakers of the garden’s hundreds of different plant species. The job requires a lot of skilled manual labor: setting up irrigation, fixing pipes, pruning, raking, mulching, and changing out seasonal plants.

“We care for the garden. We are the ones that are keeping it together. We’re the stewards,” said Hagerman. “A lot of upper management, they believe that we don’t care about the garden because we’re asking for better benefits, but we care deeply about the garden. We just can’t afford to live and also work where we love.”

Horticulturists are required to have a “really diverse plant knowledge” to work at Lewis Ginter, said conservatory horticulturist Clare Reines, and for the garden, keeping staff is important because institutional knowledge is “priceless,” she said.

But horticulturists are often asked by management to do tasks outside of their roles, staff said, such as setting up for garden events and taking over public safety tasks. During the icy storm this past winter, horticulturists were required to help clear the ice off of the garden grounds – a task that workers say was dangerous and “unnecessary.”

“In the wintertime with the ice storm, they had us here for two weeks chipping ice with shovels. A lot of us got hurt. A lot of us fell,” Hagerman said. “We were damaging our tools. And we were damaging the garden.”

Workers: more land should mean more pay

According to job postings, working as a horticulturist at Lewis Ginter requires a bachelor’s degree in horticulture or a related field and three years of experience working in gardens or parks. But for horticulturists like Reines, the pay from Lewis Ginter is low enough to allow her to file with the government as unable to pay off her student loans.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime place to work, and obviously people would want to build a career there. This is what we go to school for and delved our whole lives into,” she said. “It’s just got to the point where we’re very frustrated.”

During the past two years, horticulturists have been working on Lewis Ginter’s expansion project – which will nearly double the size of the garden’s conservatory and add 7.5 acres of new outdoor spaces. Lewis Ginter will add three new horticulturist positions to help cover the expanded grounds, but workers say that regardless, the expansion will add many more responsibilities to their plates.

The $31-million project is expected to bring Lewis Ginter more garden visitors and therefore, more revenue. During the 2024-2025 fiscal year, Lewis Ginter reported $12.8 million in gross revenue and $2.6 million in net revenue.

Since union negotiations began in late 2024, two workers have quit – and one worker was fired in what staff say is a case “under investigation” of whether the termination was related to union activities. Lewis Ginter management did not respond to requests to comment about the employee’s termination.

The workers’ union negotiation team has also whittled from four staff members to only one because collective bargaining has taken so long, said Jacoby. But garden workers are determined to secure a union contract with management that includes higher wages and better working conditions, he said.

“They’re trying to win a war of attrition. They’re hoping that we’ll all lose our faith and kind of get beaten down by the time, and maybe we’ll all move on to other jobs,” Jacoby said. “But every single person here wants to stay at the garden. I don’t think anybody’s in a hurry to leave, so there are plenty of us who are willing to wait it out.”

Liana Hardy is the Citizen’s government and education reporter. Support her work and articles like this one by making a contribution to the Citizen.