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Inspired planting enhances every space type

Best foot forward

Reception spaces are a prime opportunity for a brand to create a positive and lasting impression. Consider it the gateway to an organisation — the chance to convey culture and personality. And this isn’t just for clients and visitors, this is just as important for employees who cross the threshold every day (or every other day!) A visually striking, bold entrance area will create the right tone for visitors, and provide affirmation to employees who have chosen to come into the office.

Reception areas are often double-height, so tall, imposing, architectural plants work well, softening hard edges, where polished floors meet walls. Tropical specimens, such as strelitzia and kentia palms, are very effective grouped in floor-standing pots.

The focal point is, of course, the reception desk, so why not make it interesting? Plants can be combined with sculpture or lighting features to draw people into a hospitality area. A moss wall can inject colour and a welcome pop of nature. Statement trees, such as laurel or buxus, can provide real wow-factor and the subconscious impression that this space is valued, as are the people who work here.

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Create and collaborate

We’re now in a world where hybrid working is often the norm. But many of us are rediscovering that we can achieve so much more when we come together, rather than working in isolation. Collaboration areas are vital for the exchange of ideas, fostering team spirit and embedding company culture. Providing a variety of spaces and allowing employees to choose their preferred zone seems to be the way to optimise collaborative activity.

Banquette seating (see top left) is ideal for one-to-one meetings, whereas softer armchair seating serves more informal catch ups. Simple and unfussy works best in these collaboration areas, but care should be taken to avoid a barren and uninspiring landscape! This is where biophilia can really make a difference. Joinery planters provide privacy and noise reduction without stealing energy or perceived space from the room. Trailing planting above a large table can also help to mould a space to encourage spreading out of materials and playing with ideas.

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Connect and relax

It’s perhaps a cliché that so much of office life takes place around the teapoint, but it’s true nonetheless. It’s in these less guarded moments that we tend to really connect and get to know our colleagues on a more personal level, and discover things in common or points of difference.

These spaces can afford to be more dialled down — soft furnishings and more homely potted plants can help create a more relaxed atmosphere. Trailing plants above a breakfast bar can create a neighbourhood coffee shop vibe — a place to laugh out loud and have a more spirited exchange with colleagues. Replica and preserved planting is a practical, low maintenance option in these spaces.

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Make and impression

Meeting rooms and boardrooms are spaces where defining moments take place — people are employed, deals are shaken on, and important decisions are discussed. Much like reception areas, these spaces must be smart, professional and uncluttered, without being too boring and box-like.

Moss walls are low maintenance and require no natural light, so they’re great for gloomier rooms. For a day-to-day client meeting room, a simple floor standing specimen plant will often suffice. For a boardroom, where a greater degree of formality needs to be imparted, working biophilia around an architectural feature such as a skylight can really turn the room into something quite special for more grand occasions.

Focus and produce

Whilst coffee shop chic and collaboration spaces may be very ‘a la mode’, the desk is most certainly not dead. It will always be the place where many of us choose to complete deadline-driven work or make sales calls. These are places for focused work, but they needn’t be bleak! Planting is invaluable here, as screening, sound proofing and decoration.

Tabletop planted troughs are an office manager’s dream — they provide a linear, uncluttered approach to storage, without the usual jumble of possessions congregating on surfaces over time. One plant repeated — the spear-like sanseveria, for example — can provide interest without detracting from the focus on business. For busy call centres, palisade shelving with planting breaks up the off-putting impression of desk after desk, and help to keep noise levels down.

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Building a feeling

Designing a modern workspace that will meet the present and future needs of a fast-evolving workscape is no easy task. But creating spaces where happy teams can connect and share ideas, and build a sense of culture and belonging, can only increase the likelihood of continued success. Biophilia can help build the spaces (and the feelings!) required for these hard-to-find, intangible things to take place.

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If you’d like to know more about creating this sort of experience with planting, get in touch and we can show you what we have already done for others!