#54 Donna Letier | The Gardening Company Insurance Will Pay For

About the episode

“We’re the first gardening company that if you’re buying gardens for your employees, insurance will cover the cost.”

Donna Letier spent three decades in retail marketing, starting at Neiman Marcus under Stanley Marcus, before co-founding Gardenuity with Julie Eggers. Gardenuity now runs gardening programs for more than 500 organizations, including Cigna and Johnson & Johnson, with an 85 percent repeat rate. Most of the business is corporate.

The company was built on one statistic: 90 percent of first-time gardeners fail. Gardenuity matches plants to the buyer’s zip code and season, ships fully rooted plants from about 90 growers, and texts customers before bad weather hits. 98 percent of its gardeners succeed. A call from Cigna before the pandemic opened the corporate channel, COVID moved the workshops onto Zoom, and insurance brokers now bring in the clients.