Client Happiness and Health Always Wins Big

| July 19, 2021 | Categories: Awards & Achievements, Biophilic Design, Case Studies, Good Earth Plant Company, Living Walls, Plantscaping
Good Earth Plant Company got a nice surprise this week: our living wall project at 655 W. Broadway has won a Silver Award in its category in the 2021 Biophilic Design Awards. We love seeing our client projects featured, and we love seeing everyone else’s work. Awards make us feel great, but what’s more important about them is providing an objective measurement of the quality of our projects. Are we doing the best possible work we can for our clients? Where do we rate against our (mostly friendly) competitors? What can we learn from THEIR award-winning projects? This project has a special place in our horticultural hearts.… Read More

Indoor Plant Trends We Love in 2021

| July 14, 2021 | Categories: Architecture and Design, Case Studies, Good Earth Plant Company Tips, Indoor Plants, Plantscaping
It's good to get out, renew our relationships, and learn a few new tricks for our clients! Photo: Jim Mumford Indoor plant trends
While we were fortunate to flourish despite the pandemic at Good Earth Plant Company, it made me more aware of the importance of human socialization. We are pack animals and we do best when we interact, share ideas, and work together. This lesson became even more vivid to me this week when I attended my first workplace greenery and horticulture conference since the shutdown early last year. It’s one of my favorite shows – Cultivate 21 held annually in Columbus, Ohio by American Hort, our national organization supporting and promoting the horticulture industry. Attendance was nearly as strong as 2019! There are more than 650 exhibitors and 10,000 industry professionals like me from 30 different countries taking in the eight-acre trade show, four days of educational opportunities, and talking with my colleagues about the latest trends and solutions for our clients.… Read More

Indoor Plant Container Basics For Everyone

| July 7, 2021 | Categories: Good Earth Plant Company Tips, Indoor Plants, Plantscaping
Mixing and matching different plant and containers into a display adds up to an impressive feature in a home or workspace. Photo: Jim Mumford
So much of our inspiration at Good Earth Plant Company comes from the containers our plants live in. Don’t get me wrong. Our mission remains focused on enriching peoples’ lives with plants. But over the years, some of my biggest brainstorms came when I stretched my thinking about containers. When I realized a green roof is just one big container for plants, it started a whole new business. Plants and containers are inseparable partners to us at Good Earth Plant Company. We work with our clients to choose their containers with care – and flair! Along with the indoor plant craze that started during the pandemic, people have been getting creative with containers, too.… Read More

Indoor Plant Index Is Rising Fast

| June 23, 2021 | Categories: Architecture and Design, Biophilia, Environment, Good Earth Plant Company Tips, Indoor Plants, Plantscaping
It's not your imagination. Indoor plants are in short supply and they are worth more. Illustration: Mohamed Hassan Indoor Plant Index
Have you noticed how hard it is to find certain products or services lately? It’s not your imagination. Because of the way many of our spending and purchasing habits have changed combined with unusual limitations due to supplies and employment, there’s a lot more demand. At the top of the list, the home improvement industry has gone wild. While we were all stuck at home, we looked around and realized we needed to refresh our surroundings. This means we all called contractors, plumbers, painters, and electricians, and plantscapers. The good ones are busy, so get in line soon. It’s a shock to see the jump in building material prices, especially lumber and plywood.… Read More

Good Earth Plants Comes Alive at Art Alive 2021

| June 17, 2021 | Categories: Architecture and Design, Awards & Achievements, Biophilic Design, Indoor Plants
It finally seems like the end of a long, long 16 months. While we still need to respect the pandemic and take sensible precautions – it’s time to celebrate! We made it! It’s perfect timing for the return of one of my favorite San Diego events and the very first public event for us since early 2020. Art Alive 2021 starts today. If you aren’t familiar with it, local and national floral designers create their own floral interpretations of artworks from the San Diego Museum of Art. There will be more than 100 floral displays of art masterpieces, and a whole weekend of flower-filled activities and events as a Museum fundraiser.… Read More

Celebrity Gardeners Who Love Plants

| June 9, 2021 | Categories: Gardening, Indoor Plants, Sustainable Living
Celebrities are people, too. So during the pandemic when plants helped people cope and fill their time with a wonderful new hobby, celebrities started buying indoor plants and working on their gardens, too. Many of them couldn’t wait to share their new plants  and skills on their social media accounts. Along with all the Millennial and GenZers finding happiness and comfort with their plants, there are plenty of longtime OGs – Original Gardeners! These are the celebrities who’ve loved plants and gardening for years. Some have become horticultural authorities in their own right. At Good Earth Plant Company, we love anyone who loves plants like we do.… Read More

National Gardening Exercise Day: June 6

| June 2, 2021 | Categories: Biophilia, Gardening, Nature and Wellbeing
Get in your workout by getting in some gardening! Sunday, June 6 is National Gardening Workout Day. Photo: Jim Mumford
Our sedentary lives really hit home for many people over the last year. Did you gain the COVID-19, or was it 20 pounds? We now understand sitting in front of a screen for much of the day can be as harmful to our health as smoking cigarettes. Walking more is great, and if you have a treadmill desk, it’s not so tough to finish 10,000 steps in a day. But if you need to go for a walk the old-fashioned way – yes, outside! – it means you need to get in a minimum of five miles of walking per day.… Read More

Golf and Nature: A Winning Partnership

| May 25, 2021 | Categories: Architecture and Design, Blog, Nature and Wellbeing
We know San Diego's own Phil Mickelson gives Nature a thumbs up. Golf and Nature
San Diego enjoyed a red hot day for sports last Sunday. Between Fernando Tatis Jr. of the Padres smoking another grand slam out of the stands and golfer Phil Mickelson winning the US Open, it was a good day to be on the couch enjoying their accomplishments. You don’t have to be a big fan of professional golf to know and like Phil Mickelson, who’s from San Diego. He didn’t escape to Texas or Florida like most other golfers to evade California taxes. He and his family still call Rancho Santa Fe home. His win last week made history. He is the oldest person to win a major golf tournament at age 50.… Read More

Making Magic With Moss Walls

| May 12, 2021 | Categories: Architecture and Design, Moss Walls, Plantscaping
In case you haven’t figured it out, we love plants at Good Earth Plant Company. From our very first days selling “potted” plants and flowers, it’s been our mission to enrich peoples’ lives with plants. Over the years, we’ve gone big with plants in the form of green roofs and living walls. Living walls have been some of our all-time favorite projects. We’ve put them in restaurants, hotels, malls, schools, and quite a few private homes. They challenge us to be creative and customize each project to meet our client’s needs. But living walls need the right conditions, whether indoors or outdoors, to thrive.… Read More

Ten Plant Care Urban Legends You Need to Ignore

| May 5, 2021 | Categories: Gardening, Good Earth Plant Company Tips, Indoor Plants, Plantscaping
We love enriching peoples’ lives with plants at Good Earth Plant Company. We live for it! One of the ways we do this is sharing our tips and dropping some knowledge on you. Over the last year, so many people brought plants into the homes and their lives for the first time during the pandemic. It’s one of the most positive outcomes of a not-so-positive experience. Over many years, we’ve gotten a lot of questions about plant care, and we’ve also gotten some “tips” ourselves. I’m putting “tips” in quotes, because so many of the things we’ve heard need some serious correcting.… Read More