What Is a Living Wall?

Incorporating nature into your home or office has never been more essential—or more stunning. A living wall, also known as a green wall, transforms vertical spaces into vibrant, thriving ecosystems. Once a hallmark of large architectural projects, these lush installations are now accessible to spaces of all sizes, blending seamlessly into modern interiors and exteriors alike.

At Foliaire, we view living walls as more than just design features; they’re a reflection of harmony between nature and built environments. In this guide, we’ll explore the essentials of creating a living wall, from its unique benefits to key considerations for integrating one into your home or workspace. Let’s bring life to your walls and elevate your surroundings in ways that inspire and endure.

 

What We’ll Cover:

 

What Are Living Walls?

Living walls are panels of indoor plants that are grown vertically using hydroponics. They can either be attached to a wall or free-standing, depending on the space you are using. You may sometimes hear these structures referred to as green walls or vertical gardens. However, they generally refer to the same type of indoor plantscaping.

 

How Do Living Walls Work?

One reason why so many property owners today are considering indoor plantscaping with a living wall is a lack of space in modern residential spaces. Living walls are built in the same manner as regular walls. The fabrication team will start with a structure installed in individual sections to create your ideal living wall. You’ll find there are many high-tech options available on the market today, including self-watering systems with hidden pipes.

While you can water your living wall by hand, self-watering is a great option for a low-maintenance solution for your home. Living walls work to add a large number of plants to even the smallest of spaces, thanks to the ability to extend all the way up your wall. So, instead of taking over your floor as traditional indoor plants would do, you can make the most of unused space in your home and transform it into an indoor garden.

 

What Are the Best Indoor Plants for Living Walls?

When selecting the best indoor plants for your living wall, it’s important to consider the space. Where you will be adding this feature to your property is the first decision you should consider. The type of plants you choose will be dependent on the size of the wall you are creating and the amount of light you can offer the plants.

Philodendrons are a popular option for living walls, as they are vining plants known for their fast growth. They need very little attention, which makes them a superb choice for this type of interior landscaping. Ferns are another good option for living walls, and they also grow reasonably quickly. However, they will need more moisture than other options, and both should be placed in indirect but bright light where possible. Of course, the options are unlimited when adding plants to a living wall, so you can mix and match plants to create your desired look.

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The Benefits of Adding a Living Wall to Your Home

Living walls offer an aesthetically pleasing addition to your already stylish home. You’ll find that living walls also offer a wide variety of benefits. Plants help absorb any carbon dioxide or other pollutants and then release clean oxygen instead to maintain a clean environment for your home. On top of that, they’ll minimize the noise in your home or from the apartment next door. Based on research, people’s mood and productivity are improved when surrounded by nature. Which is why living walls are so popular within offices today.

Within cities today, we are often running out of outdoor space to build new parks and outdoor green spaces. So, individuals are looking for interior landscaping ideas to incorporate into apartments and office blocks. Yet, even during the winter months, you’ll still receive your daily dose of nature from the comfort of your home. When it’s more challenging to spend time outdoors, you can still enjoy nature indoors.

 

Where Can I Install a Living Wall?

Living walls are used by individuals and businesses today in a wide variety of buildings. They add a unique decorative element that will elevate any building and add a central focus point to the room. In addition, you’ll find that a living wall adds more texture and color to uninspiring spaces. They are the ideal solution for any property that has minimal floor space.

Are you in a studio apartment or an office filled with many desks and furniture? You can still add a beautiful living wall to your space. You can add living walls to hallways, reception areas, living rooms, meeting rooms, and any other space you fancy. It could be as small or as big as you like and designed to fit around even the most awkward wall spaces.

 

Custom Living Wall Designs

No two living walls will look the same, thanks to the variation in real plants used within their design. However, to create a really unique addition to your property, you can create a custom-made living wall. Green walls are customized to your specifications. This allows you to incorporate lighting, shelving, or a television screen into any space.

Today, many companies use a living wall within their reception area and will incorporate their company’s logo or a welcome screen into the design. As with any interior landscaping, the sky’s the limit when it comes to creating a living wall. You can customize it to blend in with your current home décor and styling.

 

Key Takeaways

Living walls offer many benefits to homeowners today and have become a frequent addition to homes of all shapes and sizes. If you are looking to bring an element of nature into your home but have already run out of space for indoor plants, you’ll find this to be an excellent solution. Living walls can brighten up any home, and they offer many environmental and health benefits to property owners. By choosing the best indoor plants for your home environment, you can enjoy a daily dose of nature without having to spend too much time on the upkeep of your new wall feature.

If you’re thinking about adding a living wall to your home or office, get in touch with one of our expert plantscaping designers to learn more!

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For more guidance on creating the perfect environment for your houseplants or to explore more about indoor landscape design, visit Foliaire’s wealth of resources. Let us help you cultivate an indoor oasis that brings beauty, health, and well-being into your everyday life.

Boston’s #1 Choice for Interior Plant Designs

Foliaire is a full-service interior and exterior greenscape design-build firm in Boston’s historic South End. For over 40 years, we’ve provided award-winning interior plantscaping services in the Boston Metro area.

We customize and plan our roof garden projects and interior plantscaping to fit your unique space and tastes. That’s how we’ve built a reputation of unparalleled style and elegance for corporate plantscaping and residential community projects.

In addition, we’ve received several environmental design awards and have appeared in several publications. You can find us in Architectural Digest, House and Garden, Horticulture, and Interiorscape.

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How Corporate Gardens Can Improve Your Workplace

With employees returning to the office after working from home for the majority of the year, you are no doubt wondering how you can improve their working experience. Adding a corporate garden to any office can do wonders for your employees and their well-being.

Our team knows that plants can transform any space. That’s why we create stunning corporate plantscaping designs that your employees will love seeing daily. Today we will discover how corporate gardens can improve your workplace and why you should consider investing in one.

What We’ll Cover:

What Is a Corporate Garden?

A corporate garden is an outdoor space designed and maintained by a corporation or business organization to enhance the aesthetic appeal of the office building, provide a space for employees to relax, and promote environmental sustainability. Corporate gardens can take many forms, ranging from urban landscaping and vertical gardens to ground-level gardens and courtyards.

The structure of a corporate garden is typically designed to create a sense of serenity and relaxation. Walkways and paths are often installed to guide visitors through the space, while benches and seating areas are strategically placed to encourage contemplation and reflection. Water features such as fountains or small ponds can also be added to create a calming atmosphere and provide a focal point for the garden.

The aesthetic of a corporate garden is meant to promote a sense of tranquility and natural beauty. Plants are carefully selected and arranged to create a harmonious balance of color and texture. At the same time, seating areas and water features are placed to enhance the overall visual impact of the space. Whether used for a quick break or a stroll, a well-designed corporate garden can provide employees and visitors with a much-needed respite from the stresses of the workplace.

Which Types of Plants Appear in Corporate Gardens?

Commonly, corporate gardens feature a range of plant species, such as perennials, shrubs, and trees. Often, the plant selection will be chosen based on factors such as hardiness, water requirements, and aesthetic appeal. Trees like magnolias, Japanese maples, and flowering dogwoods are popular in corporate gardens, while perennials like black-eyed Susans, lavender, and daylilies are also commonly included.

Additionally, succulents, herbs, and edible plants like tomatoes and basil may be grown in corporate gardens to promote a sustainable and eco-friendly workplace. The overall aesthetic of a corporate garden will depend on the business’s branding. Still, often it will reflect the surrounding environment, be designed to be relaxing and tranquil, and complement the building’s architecture.

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Corporate Gardens Reduce Stress

Corporate gardens offer your team the chance to escape their desk and connect to nature at any point of the day. Getting outside for a walk or a proper lunch break can often feel impossible. This is particularly true in high-pressure companies with endless deadlines.

Your greenscaping design will play a huge role in reducing the stress your team feels. This visual stimulation will allow employees to ground themselves and reconnect with the world around them. In time, they’ll see that their problems aren’t as bad as they thought. They’ll be able to return to work in a better frame of mind.

Corporate Gardens Are a Social Hub

Depending on the size of your new corporate garden, you’ll soon find this becomes a central hub for social activity in your office. We’ve all spent so much of the past year in front of computers at home. Now, it’s time for everyone to reconnect.

When employees can speak to colleagues in a social setting, they’ll grow their relationships. This development positively impacts trust and teamwork, which benefits any organization. Thanks to your interior plant design, you’ll give your team a new place to interact.

Corporate Gardens Improve Your Employees’ Attention Span

One surprising benefit of adding a sophisticated interior planting design is that your team’s attention span will soon increase. Urban environments are full of overwhelming stimuli. These stimuli result in your team losing the ability to focus on even the most basic tasks. We often believe that every email we receive needs a reply straight away.

However, when you’re in the presence of calming office plantscaping like living walls, you can refresh your mind and focus. This simple stimulus works to overcome the constant sensory overload we feel daily while working in our offices.

Corporate Gardens Offer Improved Air Quality

As well as the improvements to your team’s work and well-being, a huge benefit of adding interior plantscaping to any office is the improved air quality. This quality is critical for anyone who works within a large city, as pollution is a common concern for business owners.

In the long run, your employees feel more energized and engaged. The addition of nature to their office space will promote focus. We can all play our small part in overcoming the current air quality issues. Plants are a great way to combat this in any office space.

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Corporate Gardens Will Inspire Your Team

Have you ever hit a wall when working on a new project? Tunnel vision can leave you unable to come up with creative ideas. When you add a luxury interior plant design, you’ll find that your team has something to gaze at during moments of daydreaming. Nature is one of the best ways to find new ideas. If you’ve ever been on a walk when you’re feeling stressed, you’ll know the feeling.

If your team cannot leave the office and go to a nearby park at lunchtime, your corporate garden is the next best thing. They’ll enjoy admiring it from a distance and then close up. The garden offers an alternative to adding artwork to an office for inspiration.

Corporate Gardens Create a More Welcoming Environment

After spending the past year working from home, many employees struggle to return to the office. They soon became used to the cozy feeling of working from home, and it’s been quite a challenge to transition back to work all day in the workplace.

You can help to ease this transition by adding interior planting design elements that resemble plants they have at home. Our team will work with you to select some of the most popular interior plantscaping solutions. Overall, our goal is to give your employees a sense of comfort every time they walk through the door.

Corporate Gardens Absorb Background Noise

Many employees complain that they cannot concentrate in the workplace due to the endless chatter and noise in the building. With more open-plan offices than ever, the number of distractions for your team makes it almost impossible to complete the most basic tasks.

Adding an interior plant design to your office will help to absorb some of this noise and create a calmer working environment. It’s a good solution for any space with exposed concrete floors and walls. This way, you don’t have other options to overcome this challenge. You’ll want to place larger plants around the space to experience this benefit. Most importantly, you’ll want to create a place where your employees enjoy working daily.

Key Takeaways

For many reasons, a corporate garden is one of the best investments any company could make for its employees. If you’re unsure where to start when it comes to interior planting design, our team can help. We can work within your current office setup to create office plantscaping designs that will offer all the benefits we shared above.

In time, you’ll find that your employees will notice a huge reduction in their stress levels and enjoy increased productivity and creativity. Interior plantscaping is useful to offices of all shapes and sizes. It’s never too late to start making your workplace a more enjoyable place to spend time.

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Foliaire is a full-service interior and exterior greenscaping design firm in Boston’s historic South End. For over 40 years, we’ve provided award-winning urban garden and Boston fabrication services in the Boston Metro area.

We customize and plan our urban landscaping projects and interior plant design to fit your unique space and tastes. That’s how we’ve built a reputation of unparalleled style and elegance for corporate plantscaping.

In addition, we’ve received several environmental design awards and have appeared in several publications. You can find us in Architectural Digest, House and Garden, Horticulture, and Interiorscape.

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What Are Living Screens?

When considering ways to create more privacy in an office or home, there are a few different options available. Living screens allow you to avoid putting up a standard plexiglass barrier. Instead, you can create an attractive and moveable screen. Here we’re going to share everything you need to know about these beautiful features and how you can incorporate them into your office. 

What you will learn in this article:

Living Walls – How Do These Privacy Screens Work?

Living screens are widely used within office spaces today. If you have an open-plan office space, there’s often a desire to separate individual office areas. Many want to create more privacy for employees and managers. Instead of using a plexiglass barrier or a fabric-covered sectional, living screens provide privacy using indoor plants or live moss. They can be created from artificial or live plants, offering you a low-maintenance solution and adding more indoor plantscaping to your space.

Where Can Living Screens Be Used?

We place living screens where you would otherwise add other types of privacy solutions. As we mentioned above, you see them in office spaces. Designers often find these to be an excellent solution for their reception or waiting area, offering visitors more privacy or shielding them from seeing confidential material about the business they’re visiting.

Living screens are part of an interior plantscape design, and, as such, they create a more attractive working environment than you would otherwise have with other privacy options.  Indoor plantscaping offers so many benefits to everyone working within the space, which is why we highly encourage offices to consider this more appealing option. The plants used for living screens are carefully selected to thrive in an indoor environment.

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The Benefits of Living Screens

There are so many reasons why companies today opt to use living screens instead of standard privacy dividers. When you add living walls to your space, you’ll notice all of these benefits immediately, creating a more inviting and relaxing working environment for your employees.

Instant Privacy

Living screens use indoor plants to create privacy and improve discretion and security for your employees. They are an instant solution that doesn’t require you to build permanent walls for your employees but will still protect them from prying eyes and those working nearby. Especially in spaces that see a lot of activity, they can offer your staff members the privacy they need to focus on the task at hand, instead of being distracted every few minutes. We also appreciate that they can be easy to move around as either a temporary or permanent solution.

Improved Air Quality

Living screens that contain real indoor plants also contribute to improving the air quality within your office. Especially for people who are sensitive to pollution, improved air quality is something we are all looking to increase today. Live plants literally cleanse the air around you, making them ideal for use to create an overall healthy environment.

Maintenance

When installing these screens into your office, you may be concerned about them outgrowing your space. When it comes to these privacy screens, you have two options; artificial or live indoor plants. Of course, if you opt for artificial plants, you won’t have to worry about them growing beyond the wall. Even with real indoor plants, you will find that the types of moss and plants used are very easy to maintain and don’t need more than weekly attention or care.

Safety and Security

Safety is always been one of the top priorities today within offices and buildings. To keep people separated from hazards or unsightly areas, you may want to incorporate living screens into space. They can also keep unwanted visitors out of a space ideal for when a meeting is in progress or confidential matters are underway.

Planning Before You Install Living Screens

While living screens are quick and easy to install – usually completed in one day, we always encourage you to do some prior planning before purchasing this type of interior plantscape design for your office. The great news is that living privacy screens come in all shapes and sizes and can be fully customized to fit your requirements. You’ll want to start by meeting with the experts, and together planning out your space and deciding where exactly you want to place them.

As well as planning out the interior spaces you are trying to create within your office; you may want to think about your current indoor plantscaping. How will living privacy screens enhance your office’s overall aesthetic? When adding this new structure, we recommend that you use a living wall as an accent feature. Too many plants within a small space can reduce the impact of the element. 

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About Foliaire

Foliaire is a full-service interior and exterior greenscape design-build firm in Boston’s historic South End. For the last 40 years, we’ve provided the highest quality plantscaping service for clients all across the Boston Metro area. We customize and plan all of our installations to fit your unique space and tastes. That’s how we’ve built a reputation of unparalleled style and elegance for both corporate and residential community projects. In addition, we’ve received several environmental design awards and have appeared in several publications, including Architectural Digest, House and Garden, Horticulture, and Interiorscape. Follow us on social media to learn more: 

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