Unprecedented times, unprecedented solutions. A call for support.

Goldner Walsh Garden and Home recognizes that the safety of our industry, employees and the general public is our first priority. In effecting change for our industry we are initiating new procedures for our business and a call for support.

We are asking you, our loyal customers, to help us. We would greatly appreciate you contacting your elected officials. The nature of the work we do and the procedures we have in place are viable to maintain the standards for safety for our employees and our customers.

We need our Senators and Representatives to effectively communicate to Governor Whitmer and ask her to recognize the updated Federal CISA Guidelines (dated March 28) that include Landscapers as a critical infrastructure workforce (as referenced in Executive Order No. 2020-21). Currently, our Executive Order references the March 19 list that doesn’t include landscape and the Governors’ office is unwilling to accept this updated list to our knowledge.

Attached is a sample letter. Please feel free to copy and paste and add any anecdotal notes but we need to get the word out ASAP!  You can write one email, send it to one representative, and copy it to the others. Below is a list of senators we are told that is part of a newly formed bipartisan workgroup that will begin developing a plan for some businesses to open back up. We need to make sure garden centers and landscapers are the first to reopen for business.

Senator Ken Horn – [email protected]

Senator Wayne A. Schmidt – [email protected]

Senator Curt VanderWall – [email protected]

Senator Stephanie Chang – [email protected]

Senator Sylvia Santana – [email protected]

Senator Jeremy Moss – [email protected]

Mike Shirkey – [email protected]

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Dear _____________,

We are consumers of services and products provided by our local landscape company, Goldner Walsh Garden and Home in Pontiac, MI. During this ‘Stay at Home’ state directive many people, particularly the elderly and those with health restraining issues, rely on this company to help maintain their properties. For many others, gardening and having outdoor living spaces to work on and in, is a form of exercise, recreation, and benefits mental health. Since everyone is presently staying at home much more than we ever have in the past, we find this need for their service and certain products even greater.

Our personal outdoor garden and yard spaces provide vital stress relief and a source of peace aiding and supporting our mental health during these uncertain and turbulent times. As you know, even prior to this pandemic, mental health was a hot issue in our communities and now is an even more serious concern, We support the Governor and the ‘Stay at Home’ directive but due to the nature of the landscape industry and how Goldner Walsh protects their own employees and ensures our safety as a customer on the job we support providing their service.

The nature of landscape work is performed outdoors, individually, or in small teams. Landscape work can be implemented easily with appropriate social distance amongst workers with little public contact and poses a low risk of spreading COVID-19. According to OSHA classifications, the landscape industry falls in the “lower risk” category of exposure (the lowest level on their occupational classification of risk for COVID-19).

Goldner Walsh takes employee and client safety and health very seriously, enforcing strong safety standards on the job and business grounds following Federal and State guidelines to mitigate any possible COVD-19 exposures at their landscape facility and landscape work sites. Goldner Walsh has developed their own business-specific protocols and continues to refine as needed to keep current with any developments to keep its employees and customers safe. They readily share with the State of Michigan, clients, and or any other landscape company these safety measures. If all landscape companies follow these strong safety standards, this workforce could be contributing to communities’ needs, lessening the load of the unemployment strain on the State of Michigan while contributing to needed economic stability in these unprecedented times.

We are all in this together, and we feel our landscape company, Goldner Walsh Garden and Home and the entire landscape industry can stand with our public officials to stop the rapid transmission of COVID-19 while also being able to safely perform functions of their companies that are necessary and beneficial to our communities throughout Michigan.

Sincerely,