Concurrents – Environmental Psychology: Plant-Based Communities

New career option: plant coach.

Plant coaches are setting up operation worldwide, signaling a changing human-house plant dynamic. Plant coaches work with people who have, shall we say, “issues” when it comes to nurturing indoor plants. They are, in reality, landscape architects, often working at the scale of a windowsill, helping people not only keep plants alive but select the right “green friends” in the first place.

The rise of plant coaches and other social trends indicate that for many people plants are increasingly assuming the role of pseudo-pets; research indicates this seems to be especially likely among younger adults. With all of this attention to plants at home, it seems probable that people will become even more interested in adding plants to their workplaces and workspaces.

There are many positives to the increasing number of plants indoors, especially green leafy ones. For example, seeing green leafy plants has been linked to cognitive refreshment and enhanced mental performance; creative thinking seems to get a particular boost in areas with green leafy plants.

Any leafy additions at work and elsewhere will need to be carefully managed – seeing more than a couple of carefully curated small collections of green leafy plants in any cross-workplace gaze can increase stress levels by amping visual complexity to tension-inducing levels, so workplaces definitely should not become jungles, at least physically.

The physical environment at work can support brought from home “pet” plants with discretely placed grow lights and areas with “planter-like” infrastructure, which could be particularly desirable in areas abutting circulation zones. People walking can bond over conversations about plants as easily as they can over other ways that work areas can be personalized.

Managing an at-work plant is also a way for people to exercise control over their physical environment, which, as has been discussed in previous columns, does all sorts of good things for individual and group performance as well as wellbeing.

Supporting plants-from-home is relatively straightforward when people have assigned seats; when they don’t it becomes more of a challenge. Teams, to optimize their performance, should have a space they can claim as their own and, when they do, plant spaces in those team zones are logical. When teams don’t have their own areas, workplace plant “farms,” centralized or otherwise, can support plant-based communities, of both plants and humans.

Workplaces now have animate pet-related policies and infrastructure that support bringing pets that walk and swim and fly to work. Pet plant-related programs and support are also viable options for boosting employee wellbeing, and encouraging them, via vibrant (maybe even, literally, colorful) communities, to work effectively and postpone out-of-firm job searches.

Sally Augustin, PhD, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com). Research Design Connections reports on research conducted by social and physical scientists that designers can apply in practice. Insights derived from recent studies are integrated with classic, still relevant findings in concise, powerful articles. Topics covered range from the cognitive, emotional, and physiological implications of sensory and other physical experiences to the alignment of culture, personality, and design, among others. Information, in everyday language, is shared in a monthly subscription newsletter, an archive of thousands of published articles, and a free daily blog. Readers learn about the latest research findings immediately, before they’re available elsewhere. Sally, who is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is also the author of Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009) and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Inform Design (Wiley, 2012). She is a principal at Design With Science (www.designwithscience.com) and can be reached at sallyaugustin@designwithscience.com.