This interview is with Shirley and James Smith of
Botanica Nurseries Ltd who helped with the Vitamin Plant installation for National plants@work Week.
p@w: You’ve been closely involved in the National Plants at Work Week project build for the last three years helping Ian Drummond to create fantastic installations such as the Work Pod, the Ambulance - Plants to the Rescue installation and this year’s market stall Vitamin Plant, can you please tell us about your collaboration with Ian on this installation?
Shirley & James Smith of Botanica Nurseries Ltd
Shirley: I have known Ian through plants@work, we have both been members for many, many years. Ian is very good at design; he is a great designer. Botanica has its own nursery so we very much can supply the plants for the projects, and help during the installation.
James: I am the one who gets to choose all the plants that go on the display that have been previously shortlisted for the Favourite Plant of the Year. This is really fantastic, because we get the chance to bring some lovely things we wouldn’t necessarily usually buy for offices. We get a big delivery and we bring a whole van load of plants down. And then it is up to Ian to decide what he wants and where.
p@w: What do you hope to achieve with this market stall installation?
James: We do lots of work on Theale Business Park, Theale already. We are the preferred supplier for Arlington, the company that runs the facilities and a number of buildings here. It’s just really nice to get down here and have a chat to the people that work in the offices. We’ve had a catch up today with some of the people who already use our services. And then there’s a chance to market us and plants@work in general to those who have not heard about us.
It’s just a lovely opportunity to promote National plants@work Week. It’s just a lovely opportunity, that’s different to what we do day to day, which is usually quite regimented, making sure you deliver the right design, making the money, getting the sales. Whereas today it’s more about “let's chuck in thousands plants and really impress people”.
We’ve had, well, probably a hundred people come down this afternoon. They’ve all absolutely loved the display. So, yes! it’s really nice to have this opportunity to promote the plants@work Week campaign.
Shirley: plants@work do a fantastic job to promote our industry. We are a small industry in comparison to the big exterior landscapers, but we are just as important if not more so, especially as most people spend the majority of their time sitting in an office. So it’s great to work with plants@work to promote the National plants@work Week campaign and to promote indoor plants for the rest of the year.
And here, people come down to the café for their lunch and think, “ Oh this is brilliant, what are you doing?” It’s great to see so many enthusiastic people.
Shirley with a Strelitzia
p@w: Which is your favourite of the five plants used this year?
Shirley: My Favourite is the Strelitzia. It’s a newer plant to be used in offices. We’ve probably only been using it for the last five or six years. It’s quite tough, you can put it in any location, and it can tolerate fairly low light. I know it’s not the easiest plant to look after, so it won't be the one that the maintenance technicians choose as their favourite plant. But wherever you put Strelitzia in an office people go “Oh, Wow what’s that?”
James: My favourite plant is Scindapsus, I love the variegation these plants come in. Even today, we’ve had a lot of people passing by the market stall and saying, “Oh I have never seen that one before, and oh I can buy one in Tesco or IKEA.” There is such a massive variety of them people do not know about.
James with a Scindapsus
I love that they are trailing. Botanica is doing a lot of work these days where people prefer really big tropical displays as opposed to very corporate matching things. They have lovely foliage, we have them trailing, you can hang them up in offices, you can have them trailing down cabinets. And also a lot of our clients nowadays love that they can take cuttings from them because Scindapsus are dead easy to propagate.
We always try to use them in the offices, they are easy to maintain and our technicians like them very much.
p@w: How do you plan to engage visitors and promote the benefits of indoor plants through this display?
James: This market stall speaks for itself. We have not had a single person walk past that has not gone, ”O my God, wow!” Let the plants, such a huge variety of them, do the talking. People are really interested in them, they are asking about them, how to look after them.
Botanica Nurseries likes to use a massive variety of different plants in offices, to make them unique and make the people who work there more special. Plants are not a part of the furniture anymore. This market stall is perfect for showcasing a variety of colours, shapes, styles and flowers in one small space that looks beautiful.
Shirley: Yes, I agree with James, I think the variety here is fantastic. Gone are the days when interior designers and fit out companies would give you a spec asking for Kentia palm and Ficus Benjamina, nowadays we use various plants in the office displays which make them very impactful. We are going back to real mixed displays, which is what we used to do in the 80s.
p@w: How do you see the role of interior plants evolving in the workplace in the coming years?
James: I think one of the key things we are seeing at the moment, particularly on business parks, companies are desperate to get their staff back into the offices, they do not want people working at home all the time. Companies offer flexible working hours, nobody wants office space sitting empty.
We’ve certainly seen recently the development has gone from lots of little grey boxes with a desk and a computer and not much else to more open plan- people friendly offices. This approach means that the office became a more flexible workspace. If you are going just to sit at the desk and stare at the computer screen for eight hours you may as well do it at home and save yourself the commute. In the recent, post-pandemic, installations we adapt the office space to new working conditions with many communal and creative spaces and meeting rooms.
The researchers have shown that having any type of plant in the office, boosts creativity and it boosts happiness, it encourages people to get back in and work more efficiently in an office space.
Shirley: The office managers and specifiers are requesting more elaborate interior landscaping designs. They are really trying to make the offices pleasant places to work in and make them more enjoyable. Everyone would rather be at home, sitting in the garden on a hot sunny day. But if you want to work, you want your work environment to be as nice as possible. Working from home is not always ideal. You don’t get to mix with other people, you do not participate in the office banter; the young staff and trainees do not have the chance to speak to more experienced colleagues and to learn from them. So making offices nicer to work in, encourages people to come back even if it is just for two or three days.
p@w: How do you incorporate the principles of this initiative into your own work environment or daily life
James: By filling your house completely full of second hand plants…. I know that my and Shirley’s houses are completely filled with them. So when there’s a plant that’s not good enough to be used in the installation it usually finishes in our homes. And we nurse it back to health. It does remind me of the saying… I know it’s a bit of cliché but people say if you love your job you don’t do a day’s work. So doing what we do and seeing positive impact, really reminds me how incredibly lucky we are to be part of this industry.
Shirley: We are lucky to have our own nursery, so we’ve got plants surrounding us, we have plants everywhere, at home and at the office.
They survive no matter the circumstances they are in. You realise how tough plants are when you put them in an office location, which really they shouldn’t survive in because they should be outside in the rainforest. But they do brilliantly there when you look after them well.
They are so good for you!
p@w: Thank you very much, Shirley and James.
You can hear the interview here