The tres birds designed workspace at Quick Left in Boulder, Colorado embraces nature to create a healthier and more productive workplace. Photo: Courtesy http://tresbirds.com/

For more than 38 years, Good Earth Plant Company has made it our mission to bring the beauty, health, well-being and environmental benefits of living plants and nature into your life. We started out as florists and our business grew into providing interior plantscaping design and service to many of the leading workspaces in the San Diego region.

As technology has improved and as thinking has evolved about the importance of humanizing our workspaces by bringing the “outside” inside, we have eagerly embraced living walls, green roofs, and other creative natural structures along with container plants and other traditional interiorscape designs at restaurants, upscale hotels, shopping centers, universities, hospitals, corporate headquarters, schools and nonprofits throughout Southern California and the nation.

We’re excited to see all the principles we believe in including biophilia, biometric design, wellness and well-being, inclusive design and incorporating lights, plants and nature at the top of workplace design trends for 2016. We feel like we hit the jackpot!

Workplace design experts agree the office isn’t just a place we work anymore. We spend more and more time (a third of our day!) in our workplace environments, and among the challenges companies face is attracting and keeping the best talent, and ensuring their well-being and comfort in their physical workspace.

Whenever someone imagines the perfect workspace, do you think they come up with a description of cold corporate cubicles, dominated by grey walls, carpets, and desks? Of course not. They describe a place with natural light, warm and bright colors, comfortable places to sit and have meetings, nice chairs. Throw in a latte and a potted plant and wouldn’t this describe your favorite neighborhood coffee house?

The QuickLeft software company in Boulder, Colorado has office space designed by tres birds embracing the trend of incorporating nature into the modern workspace. Photo: Courtesy http://tresbirds.com/

Employers have been forced by the marketplace to make work a more comfortable, enjoyable place, and they’ve found the most effective way to do it is get away from sterile, cold, artificial light and hard metallic surfaces by creating the feeling of nature. Experts predict more natural finishes, woods and fabrics, floral patterns in artwork, and vibrant colors.

Employers are also realizing when they make the workplace more appealing, they are also making their employees more productive when they are healthier and happier. Imagine that, they are finding out by embracing biophilia and healthy workplaces that it improves the bottom line. We all know money talks – and money IS green after all!

While all of this is a positive development, we believe in more than bringing in the “feeling” of nature. Good Earth Plant Company actually brings REAL nature into the workplace for our clients. See our new program “living art” that incorporates brightly blooming plants with elements of nature – stones, shells, moss and driftwood

We have so many more ways to accomplish this today than when I founded Good Earth Plants back in the last century (wow!). One of my current obsessions is our wonderful Italian made moss walls, which use preserved lichen from the Netherlands to replicate real living moss. These are mounted on panels that can be different colors and different shapes – limited only by our own creativity. They offer flexibility without needing light or water, and they can survive in a lot of interior environments where traditional plants won’t thrive.

As we get ready to say goodbye to 2015 and welcome 2016, we welcome this renewed attention to the relationship people have to nature. It’s more central to our well-being than we really imagined. We understand being exposed to natural light and air makes us feel better, but now we know backed by scientific research the beneficial effects are physical and psychological. There is no downside to making our working environments pleasant, positive, and nature oriented. It’s so much more than checking off a box to get a building permit. Maybe we should be saying “Happy Green Year!” instead of just “Happy New Year!”