More Than a Job: What It Means to Be an ESE

Seeds of Change is an Employment Social Enterprise, or ESE. That may sound like a business-school term, but the idea behind it is pretty simple: we use business as a tool tocreate meaningful employment for people who have faced barriers to work.

For us, that means landscaping and mission are not two separate parts of the company. They are connected.

We design, build, and care for beautiful outdoor spaces. We have customers to serve, deadlines to meet, skills to master, and high standards for our work. At the same time, we intentionally create opportunities for people who may have been overlooked by traditional employers because of incarceration, recovery, or other significant barriers.

Our mission is to provide meaningful, dignified work and safe, accountable relationships to people facing those barriers.

The word accountable matters.

Being a second-chance employer does not mean lowering expectations. A second chance still requires showing up, learning, accepting feedback, working as a team, and taking responsibility. What we strive to provide is an environment where a person has the opportunity to do those things and a place where a past mistake does not automatically disqualify them from building a different future. That is what drives our mission every day.

Landscaping gives us the opportunity to create something tangible. At the end of a project, you can step back and see what hard work accomplished: a patio where there was once bare ground, a garden beginning to take root, or a backyard ready for new memories.

Human growth is harder to photograph. But it is happening. In skills learned, trust earned, responsibility accepted, and confidence rebuilt. And most importantly, it’s happening through community. Our staff is a family. We care about one another deeply and we show up when things get hard. We celebrate together and we mourn together. Every Monday in our morning circle time we share sobriety dates, birthdates and milestones. When someone reaches a year at Seeds, their name goes on our Core Values wall, permanently. They are here, they are part of this community and they are valued.

Transforming landscapes is what we do.

Transforming lives is why it matters.