by Leslie Caimi, Staff reporter, Columbus Business First
In the stark, fluorescent world of Lumon on the HBO show Severance, there’s only one spot that feels remotely comforting: the plant room.
The thing is, real life isn’t that different from TV.
Across Columbus, office buildings are starting to resemble indoor jungles as landlords soften marble-heavy lobbies to give workers something a little more soothing to look at.
Examples include the vertical gardens flanking the entrance of Rockbridge’s Easton headquarters and the giant, two-story living walls inside the Huntington Center downtown at 41 S. High St. Those lush green walls hugging the escalators at Huntington were constructed using 8,500 individual plants spread across two freestanding walls totaling about 2,500 square feet. Keeping them alive requires a team of horticulturalists to care for them.
A smaller hanging wall runs a few thousand dollars to install, depending on complexity and requires less maintenance. No matter the size, demand for indoor greenery has grown in recent years.
“During Covid, many people worked from home, so they started building a workspace they felt comfortable in,” Genevieve Mills from Oakland Green Interiors told Columbus Business First. She said that put pressure on employers to spruce up workspaces once employees returned to the office.
Her firm, which specializes in biophilic design – sometimes referred to as interiorscaping – is part of Oakland Nurseries. Mills’ team is made up of 20 to 30 technicians – depending on the season – who help select and install plants at commercial offices and make sure they stay alive and healthy.
About 60% of their work is commercial installations, though they do plenty in hospitality, too. Those projects usually come with more “razzle dazzle,” she said.
Mills’ Columbus office clients include the newly opened space for Rev1 Ventures, Donatos Pizza’s headquarters and a number of law firms, including Vorys Sater Seymour and Pease; Bricker Graydon Wyatt; and Ice Miller.
A lot of the work used to mainly focus on lobbies, where a lonely planter might have been tucked in a corner. That’s changing. “It’s less about the grand entrance for visitors and more about planters, green walls and even the pattern of wallpaper in the spaces where employees are actually working,” Mills said.
Some companies are using greenery as an engagement tool.
At the Dublin offices of Sarnova, employees can “check out” a potted plant for a week to brighten up their workspaces, then return it for servicing by the Oakland team. That concept recently earned Oakland Green Interiors an award from the International Plantscape Industry Alliance.
While Mills’ team can retrofit existing offices, it also works with architects and developers in the planning stages of new-builds to make sure the space is plant-friendly with consideration given to plumbing, lighting and drainage. “The goal is thoughtfully designed nature connections, not just a handful of plants in a lobby,” she said, adding how green additions can improve air quality, relieve stress and boost cognitive performance.
“We as humans have been connected to nature for all our evolutionary history,” Mills said. “It only makes sense to carry that into our modern work spaces.”
