Eco conscious designing with plants.
House plants are known to bring numerous benefits to your home and workplace and greener design practices are now more commonplace than ever. The term ‘Biophilia’ gets bandied about by everyone; but how often do designers consider where the plants they use in their schemes actually come from?
Having had an online plant shop that only sells British grown indoor plants, means that I am now more aware than ever before of the environmental cost that importing plants has on our planet. Unfortunately, the U.K. interior landscaping industry is heavily reliant on over seas suppliers and I’m not surprised that they are the go to. Their offering is a humongous variety of good quality plants, in almost any size you need, whenever you want them! But is this ‘sweet shop’ of foliage always necessary?
Having worked in the sector for numerous years, until very recently all of the plants I used were imported and in more recent post-Brexit years; at an extremely high financial cost with new import procedures costing businesses excessive amounts. But the reality for many plantscapers is that they are more often than not, ordering the same plant species over and over again for commercial installations. Tried and tested plants always take precedent….so is such a vast offering really needed?
In my opinion plant trends have a lot to answer for; yes ‘newness’ is always exciting for retail purposes, but the reality is, many of these ‘new’ or ‘rare’ plants are in fact much older than you think. In a commercial context, plant selection will always favour the old timer classics. Snake plants, Kentia Palms and Monstera’s etc will always trump an unusual variety of Alocasia.
My personal journey back into houseplant retail was largely made possible by the new beginnings of a British houseplant industry, with one very special grower in particular making my endeavour possible. The team at Bury Lane Farm converted their glass houses into an energy efficient space to cultivate peat free houseplants as part of their personal mission to change where we source our indoor greenery. Their plants are grown more slowly than their international cousins meaning I’ve seen a dramatic impact on the longevity of the plants I’ve used in some of my designs. They seem greener, stronger and as they don’t go on an epic journey to the U.K. before I even use them; less traumatised.
So now designing interior plant displays, I now have a more local, affordable and sustainable supplier to consider and let’s face it…prioritise when I can! Whilst I currently can’t use 100% British grown plants to create every plantscape; it’s definitely a huge step in the right direction and the range available will only get better.
