An American Psychological Association (APA) article highlights the benefits of spending time in nature. It says time spent in nature can reduce stress and mental distress and boost cognitive flexibility, working memory, focus, and concentration.
In other words, nature makes humans feel happier and work better. This aligns with the biophilia hypothesis, which asserts humans seek a connection with nature and other life forms.
If you want yourself and the people you work with to be happier and more productive, calling a landscaping company is a step in the right direction. Landscaping will incorporate nature into your workplace, exposing everyone to the natural world and satisfying the human need to be connected to nature.
What Is Landscaping?
Landscaping is transforming outdoor spaces through plants and accessories. It refers to executing a landscape design, which a professional designer has drawn after analysing and planning the space according to the desired function and aesthetic.
Landscape designers base their plans on the landscape architect’s overarching environmental design. Is a commercial tower aiming to create a lush rainforest-like setting for the property? Maybe a restaurant is going for a modernist, minimalist exterior to complement its molecular gastronomy cuisine.
In sum, providers of landscaping services use plants and features (e.g., ponds, fountains, rocks, paths, lights, benches, statues, a gazebo, etc.) to convert the exterior of a building into something beautiful, usable, liveable, and aligned with the landscape design and vision. More importantly, landscaping can provide a valuable connection to nature.
Imagine the exterior of your office building bordered by a canal inhabited by koi fish. The canal is fed by a sparkling fountain that serenades everyone with the cadence of burbling and splashing water. The gently rolling expanse is filled with green grass, with individual sections bounded by flowering bushes. Paved paths lead to coves and benches shaded by large-canopy trees.
It sounds like a dream, doesn’t it? Landscaping should be worth it to have a place where you and your employees (including your clients and guests) can feel a tangible connection to the natural environment.
Landscaping the Interior: Plantscaping
When you green the inside of a building with plants and accessories, it’s called interior landscaping, also known as plantscaping.
Plantscaping is the application of landscaping’s purpose and function to building interiors. Like landscaping, it aims to create beautiful, usable, and liveable spaces — but indoors.
Plantscaping’s distinct focus does give rise to practical differences between landscaping and plantscapingpractices. For instance, while you can build a tropical rainforest outside, doing the same inside may be impractical or even impossible for your office building.
There’s a limit to the things you can do indoors. For instance, you are restricted by the ceiling height when choosing indoor plants. It’s not impossible to use trees, but particularly tall ones can be difficult unless your building has a ready atrium that soars many stories to a skylight ceiling.
Of course, these limits can and have already been breached. Take the Jewel at Changi Airport in Singapore or The Spheres at the Amazon campus in Seattle. The former is home to an indoor forest with over 2,000 trees, 100,000 shrubs, 120 plant species, and the world’s largest indoor waterfall.
Meanwhile, the latter has a vertical garden (the Canyon Living Wall), a flower garden (the Fernery), a canopy walk, and more than 40,000 plants, including carnivorous pitcher plants.
Jewel and The Spheres, however, are planned biophilic structures. The buildings were built for biophilia; thus, nature and providing connection to it are a key focus of their design. You may not have the privilege to build from scratch, in which case your plantscaping options are automatically limited.
Landscaping Interiors: Practical Approaches
Even so, your landscaping company can employ strategies to integrate nature effectively with your building interior. For instance, if the space is cramped and there’s no leeway to do extensive structural work, it can build vertical gardens or living walls. It can also install moss walls instead of an entire indoor garden.
Your landscape company can install artificial plants if you need a lower-maintenance alternative. When used correctly, artificial trees, hanging vines and flowering shrubs can still provide a connection to nature.
Plantscaping with live plants indoors can be challenging because you must take the outdoor conditions suitable for growing plants and replicate or create them inside. For instance, to ensure your indoor plants can get sufficient sunlight, you may have to do one or more of the following:
- Put your potted plants near windows and sunlit areas so they can get the right amount of natural light.
- Renovate your space to bring natural light inside – e.g., add a sunroof, add windows, replace outdoor walls with glass walls, etc.
- Choose low-light plants, especially if the first two options are not feasible.
Landscaping: Connecting You to Nature
Humans are inherently driven to seek out life and nature, and they thrive when this need is satisfied. A green landscaping services provider can help you achieve this through exterior and interior landscaping.