2024 HOUSEPLANT DESIGN TRENDS — Ep. 365

I synced up with plantswoman, Rebecca Bullene—founder of @Greenerynyc to discuss what houseplant and green interiorscape design trends are happening in and around New York City. You can check out their retail location in Greenpoint, Brooklyn here: https://greenerynyc.com/

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Hello hello and welcome to Greenery NYC this is our Greenpoint production and Design Studio here in Brooklyn New York I have never been to this location this is kind of like your non- retail location it is our non- retail spot so we have this is where we uh design build all of our large scale plant

Installations that are throughout New York City and our retail store is more for our you know residential customers so let’s talk about that this is like more of a commercial place where you build out green Walls and installations and what I’d like to kind of find out from you today is what are

The trends that people are looking for at least in that space and that can translate well over into uh residential spaces as well yeah Greenery NYC we designed build maintain large scale plant installations for indoor environments we do a little bit of landscaping in New York City but what

We’re really known for is creating really immersive experiences in commercial spaces so we work with lots of tech companies and office spaces and lobbies pretty much anywhere in New York City where you might see indoor plants we may have had a hand in it so this is

The space where we design and build all of that um and you mentioned Trends and it’s been really really interesting so I’ve been in this business for 15 years and postco has just been an incredible explosion of interest in how do you successfully incorporate plants into the built environment I think people always

Love to have you know a potted plant in the conference room or something in the lobby um but really in the past three years people are starting to really understand the the wellness benefits of bringing plants indoors letting people have that sustained and repeated engagement with nature and so a lot of

Customers have come to us and say you know we want to put a lot of plants in this space but how do we do it in a way that’s going to last 10 years 20 years 30 years and is designed nicely because it could get quickly out of hand yes

Exactly and a lot of Maintenance as well so I’m imagining that you help upkeep with the maintenance of some of these installations we do that’s a big part of our business is maintenance and the biggest part of our team so we have 36 employees and the biggest part of that

Are professional horticulturists so they travel all around New York City maintaining our installations sometimes weekly bi-weekly sometimes quarterly um and that’s sort of the one of the big things we set out when we do designs for new customers is really figuring out what is the appropriate maintenance plan

How often is someone going to have to interact with that and you asked about Trends and I think that’s one of the biggest things we’re seeing right now is while you see an increase in desire for plants there’s a decreased appetite for spending a lot of money to maintain

Plants and so where we’re sort of bridging that Gap is with technology and so you know thanks to a lot of things that have been happening in the Cannabis industry recently there’s amazing grow lights on the market there’s amazing irrigation systems on the market and we’ve been able to create and assemble a

Lot of different tools to help keep operational costs low while still creating these really large scale plant installations and I’d say that’s probably one of the biggest Trends is Big installations big plants so you know before I think people were maybe a little bit scared of putting large trees

In now that’s probably one of the most common requests we have people want to see nine foot 12T 20ft trees and doors they basically want an Atrium they do they want an Atrium even if the ceilings only 12T high they still want to find a

10ft tree to and they may not have a skylight like you know like above exactly and I think part of you know our work is trying to educate people on what does it take to actually maintain that tree so it’s not just beautiful day one

Or even year one but how do we actually create an environment and ecosystem where that plant can Thrive indoors long term and so part of that is understanding the plant pallet that you have to work with right so it’s just making sure you’re selecting the right

Species and the right type of plant for the environment that you have or it’s trying to convince people to adjust the environment to suit the plants and that might be including grow lights or changing ventilation areas there’s a lot you can do with the architecture to make

It more hospitable for plants and the one thing I always tell you know our customers is what plants like people like we kind of love the same conditions right we always want to like 50% humidity beautiful lighting it’s like what PL makes plants happy makes people happy so if you can do that

Architecturally you’re actually going to be able to have really successful PL I guess like the subtropical and tropical species are kind of like us yes yes they are there was a more native tree I’d be like I don’t like those cold Winters very good point yes so I say PE

People more like the subtropical plant environment exactly 72° pretty even keeled all the time one of the big trends you said is big plants leaning into the big big big some of the other things automations as well yeah definitely automations and I think part of the automation is something like you

Might see a here which is you know what we would call an overhead installation um and so especially in New York City floor space is such a premium and so people want to try to find ways to incorporate plants and not necessarily give up too much floor space and I think

From a design perspective too you can actually accomplish the same feeling of having a large canopy tree just by elevating plants um and so having really Dynamic mix displays especially something like that where you can see you know The Ficus is starting to grow on the walls it start to really

Integrate with the architecture I think that’s when you start to really unlock those benefits of biophilia and biophilic design is when you really see the merging of plants with architecture I think that’s what gets people really excited and I always make the joke like New Yorkers are so jaded you know uh

Myself included but what gets people to really stop in their tracks is plants because it’s the thing we don’t get to see enough of and so when people see really large Plant installations or they see plants that seem to be really happily integrating with the built environment that’s usually thing that

Gets people to say like oh my God wow that’s beautiful and it also gets them to see I think different species and sort of escapes this plant blindness thing that happens to a lot of New Yorkers we just see green we’re like oh I identify that as plant as opposed to

When you start to put together a lot of different varieties especially in an overhead people can start to actually see the diversity um and I think that gets people really excited yeah and I think what’s interesting about this is that you were saying you know some

People want big plants and you know you could do it through like you know having this big standard fikus tree over here but what you’re saying is that you could also combine a number of plants with different textures and everything and it feels big already because you’re just

Like utilizing all that space up there and you don’t need the tree you could just have all these very herbaceous or climbing clambering varieties that just fill the space exactly and I think what’s really cool is you start to see you know varieties like the monstera or philodendrons like the one behind you

Right when they start to get big and Beau start to like really project off the surfaces the impact of that is really huge so even if we took that plant out if we put it on the floor probably wouldn’t be as impressive it’d be like oh that’s a lovely you know

Sitting at knee height kind of thing when you elevate it like that you get to experience it in a totally different way uh and I think that is something that we’re seeing people really want to see more of especially in urban environments and I think New York City in particular

But a lot of you know my colleagues in Industry throughout the cities are sort of seeing the same things which is this idea of just potted plant or just tabletop plant on a desk that’s a little bit out of favor now it’s really how can we do these larger mix displays how can

We put plants on the wall how can we suspend them from the ceiling how can we make just a really bigger more impactful and I think more architecturally integrated installation now one of the challenges that you have with something like this is of course water light and even maybe

Switching plants out how are you overcoming the challenges I guess yeah I mean I think that’s the beauty of Technology right so with uh automated irrigation and lighting so we have what’s called an ilcu an irrigation and lighting control unit so that’s a computer that can control the grow

Lights and the irrigation and we can actually you know plants sort of have that beautiful ratio the more light the more water they may be processing so you can actually really start to dial in how much water you need to utilize and how much light you’re providing so the grow

Lights here um and even though we have skylights and everything else right it’s still not enough to really support a lot of the plant life that we want to try to grow here um so all this stuff is automated so all of the plants that are

There are on irrigation so no human is actually watering those plants the only care they’re providing is really more aesthetic and then hopefully and occasionally Pest Management depending on sort of what’s coming in and what might be happening in the seasons but that’s really how you are able to

Achieve this if if if we had to have someone up here watering they would probably have to be up here twice a week right and there’s also that problem with humans which is that we’re just inconsistent as a species and so you know some one person may say this plant

Looks thirsty and they may overwater it and then someone else comes in two weeks later like this has been overwatered and then they restrict the water and that sort of push pull of like you know flood drought is what really stresses plants and I think when you start to utilize

Technology and you start to dial in that the ability to be very consistent with both the water and nutrients you’re providing that’s when you really start to see awesome plant health and really low care needs for the plants yeah so now we’re in the office side of our

Studio so you were on sort of the production side and now we’re in the space this is where all of our design and sort of back of house production things are happening um as you can see there’s actually no natural light in this space it used to be an old Plumbing

Warehouse that um we’ve rented so we worked to the design we actually utilized the original drop ceiling but these are all grow lights so every single one of these tiles is in a grow light that we can actually control um the volume of so we can in increase and

Decrease the foot candles that we’re projecting depending on whether humans are working here or whether we really want to support plant growth are these somehow soundproof too or like I could think of drop ceilings I think of soundproof but like you went instead of soundproof you just went with light just

Went with light which is you know the most important thing in our field right is is light it’s light and then water um and so part of this like our space is really a place of re experiment um and we’re trying to test out different types

Of technology to grow plants so that we can better provide opportunity and options to our clients so you know we said earlier I work with a lot of tech companies and one of the interesting things and sort of trendy things that’s coming out now is the idea of creating

These unplugged spaces so it’s spaces where employees can go they don’t bring any devices and they can just engage with nature um and so these might be like smaller conference rooms that are sort of transformed into almost like humanized terrariums um but in order to do that we have to adjust the

Architecture we have to provide roll lights we’re going to have to provide irrigation we have to figure out how we’re going to do air exchange so it doesn’t get crazy humanid in there if it’s just in a closed in space so this area of our office is really a place

Where we’re experimenting with a lot of that so that we can talk to our clients from you know place of understanding saying like hey I tested 16 different grow lights these are amazing um and so we can really help them have tools to do these really large scale cool Plant

Installations and I’ll take you into the office here and show you so we’re talking about you know the idea of automation technology and this is a really cool product um that we’re super Jazz about which is a green divider and so this is a completely automated grow system it incorporates its own grow

Lights as you can see and it has its own irrigation system so within here if I pop this guy open you can see um so it’s pretty simple in idea but complicated in execution so stainless steel tank which is totally refillable and this tank um is a little under five gallons and it

Basically gets you about six weeks worth of water so again when you’re thinking about how you could reduce the operational cost if this is something if all you have to do is refill the tank and there’s an indicator light on the side that turns red does p pull up does

It pull the up the water or how does on a pump yep so it’s on a pump so the pump basically um connects with that timer and so each one of these is a sub irrigated so it has a capillary mat at the bottom and the water is pumped up

Through this back chamber here and you can see these irrigation lines right in here and so that actually goes down to the base of the Box connects to a capillary mat and you inject the water into the mat so all the water is actually hitting right at the root Zone

And it gets an even spread um so you’re being really you know conscientious and water-wise you don’t have to use a ton of water because you’re really putting it right into the root Zone um like I said so this gets you about six weeks worth of water and this is something

Once it’s calibrated and you sort of understand what you know what species are you going to put in here how much water are they going to use this is something that you just like a facilities person anybody could just refill the tank and it’s dialed in and

What’s cool about this too is you can you probably see here right I’ve got ferns going in one box and then I have file dendrons going in another you can actually get really specific on each box so the fern box is actually receiving probably double the amount of water that

The philodendrons are so you can actually adjust even on an individual level you know how much water the boxes are receiving depending on the plant species you want to put in and so for me stuff like this is so cool because it allows you to have a much wider variety

Of species and types of plants and I think that’s part of the other thing we talk about what’s cool and trendy now in plant design people want to see different types of plants you know I think everyone has seen the agona in the dentist’s office we know kind of know

What that plant is and when you start to introduce people to like different Bonia varieties and different philodendron varieties and different types of ferns things they don’t they’re not used to seeing in office environments that’s when people get really excited um and so I think products like this that you know

You can actually I said really get specific with the amount of water you’re giving and provide adequate amounts of light for plants the pallet opens up exponentially what do you think the lifespan is to the capillary mats in there like do you have to change them

Out at any kind of regularity we haven’t so I have um you know the first version of these is now going on six years old and I’ve had no need to change that out yet um and I think at a certain point you know dep and I think part of that’s

Like the fun part of it testing to see like how what happens when the Fern’s in there for 5 years am I going to have to take that out is it going to completely absorb and eat the capillary mat that’s part of the fun like experiment process of like working with these different

Types of technology is kind of understanding that and maybe at some point right that that the good thing I about it I guess is that it’s in a way you could just take that line and put in uh a pressure compensating emitter right if you had to or like a spike emitter so

There’s different ways to to to think about what the future growth looks like but that’s that’s the exciting part is like what happens to the plants if you can actually create these environments yeah I can’t remember when I first got capillary mats in my place but I have

Terracotta pots on top of them and The Roots start growing out onto the capillary mat and I guess you could always root prune or some things like that but that’s why I asked because I was like my capillary mats are kind of seeing the end the end of their

Capillary life yeah and I wonder I mean that’s part of the fun thing too is like because this is that mix right these are actually direct planted with soil on top of capill mat they also have some expanded clay aggregate in there too as a drainage layer and so we’re have

Enough Iration so part of that is like finding what is the perfect balance and how long does that balance buy you like I said I have some of these dividers that have been up for like 5 years um regardless it reduces maintenance in in general you know what I mean it’s like

You can’t go without zero maintenance you know at the end of the day there’s no maybe you want to go with like a plastic plant and then even then you still have to dust it no plastic um but I think that’s exactly the point there’s no such thing as a no maintenance plant

When we’re working in an indoor environment right it’s different when we don’t have the benefit of Mother Nature to provide like sun and water for us like that’s dependent upon the human to provide the Water and Light but if we can utilize technology then all of a

Sudden what you know what once maybe cost someone you know $5,000 a year to have a hor cultur us come in and water and take care of it can you reduce that down so now that person’s only coming once a quarter right once every 3 months they’re coming in and really just doing

Aesthetics like all of a sudden all that budget that someone was spending to essentially pay someone with a watering can could go towards larger bigger installations which I think is really exciting because that’s ultimately what I’m my end goal cover New York City with plants it’s a beautiful end

Goal welcome uh so this is our retail space and we also use this as a showroom so people can come in and see what it feels like to be amongst thousands of plants um this is a place we have some of our automated systems in here with overhead Planters which are irrigated

Living walls different types of custom grow lighting that we use this one in particular is called our tree Halo um so that’s a piece we designed to really try to support canopy growth uh in indoor spaces but everything in here is for sale and stage and there’s lots of

Different plants pots accessories use all kinds of different things to support plant-loving people in their Journey with plants yeah you have all this like overhead plants up there so you’re not you’re not crawling up there you’re using some kind of fertigation or irrigation system up there both exactly

So um all the overhead and the green wall are on automated irrigation systems and they also have fertigator so we’re injecting fertilization into the water lines so as we’re watering we’re also providing nutrients to the plants how often are you swapping out any plants in here so I

Would say with these it’s probably every I don’t know maybe three or four months and sometimes it’s an aesthetic choice so for example the agon bills I’ll come around and show you some of them they just start to grow a little bit wall like long for the wall so they might

Lanky they get a little lanky so and if you start to prune them back sometimes you can start to feel a little bit like you’ve got a ball patch so sometimes it’s just an aesthetic choice of you know and especially because this is a public retail space you know I think in

Some of our others I I would be okay with it maybe looking a little patchy as things grow out but this this one has to look beautiful all the time uh and so sometimes we’ll be swapping things out but there’s a lot of plants here that are original to the original wall design

Which was put in in 2019 I’d say the majority of the plants are original um and so the team is actually pruning it once a month so once a month we kind of go through and do a big get the ladders out and sort of do a big deeper prune um

And the water cycle here is completely automated um so we have a plumbing line that’s set up over there goes down into a tank system in here so you’ve got stainless steel tank in here with a pump and that’s basically pumping the water back up to the wall and they have

Different zones and so the way this particular wall functions and this is a tray system um is that it has these water lines that run across and so each tray actually drips behind to the next one so as you’re running the irrigation we have you know these sort of

Horizontal lines that go through water and then as one tray fills it Waters the next and Waters the next and Waters the next um and that’s mostly how Trace do and function so I’ll can take a couple plants out so you can see these are actually individual for plants and so

This wall just watered this morning so you can see it’s still a little bit dripping and that’s even if we get in here you’d see there’s actually a little bit of a reservoir for water in here as well so when the system runs it’s retaining a little bit of Water by

Design and so this is going to get us probably about 10 days or so in between waterings for most of our commercial clients we use the tray system so the biggest prote to that is that because if there ever is some kind of catastrophic failure or diseased plant or pest you

Can literally it’s as easy as just removing a 4-in plant or a couple 4-in plants and being able to clean the trays out and replace them so from a care perspective operational perspective the trace system is really easy to operate you know the downside to that is that

You’re not going to see these plants spread because each individual plant is restricted to that 4in container so over time they are going to outgrow the pot so you’re going to have to do Replacements or you’re going to have to do root pruning so there’s maintenance there but you’re never really going to

Get even though I think this wall is beautiful and it has it does it is dynamic and it has some texture to it it’s not going to have you know a 4 foot Ficus coming out of the top and creating a beautiful canopy um so I think again

There’s pros and cons to the different types of systems that are out there um and it really is starts in the beginning to say what’s the most important component here is it the Aesthetics of the wall and I want to see different varieties and I I’m really happy with it

Morphing and Chang changing and evolving over time or is it important that it’s really easy to take care of and I want it to actually be the same over time let’s actually also talk about the water quality system do you need like a an R

Water or can you use the city water with all the chlorine and the fluoride in and all that other type you want to filter it so yes so this is tied to Municipal system but it’s going through filtration before it actually hits the wall and I think that is really important

Especially with certain varieties of plants right they start to exhibit characteristics of some of those minerals that you’d find in city water so um unless you want to be sort of changing those out it’s always a good idea to use a filtration system before you can actually bring water to the wall

And that’s s of across theboard any system and I think the easiest way too with fertilization is like using that so bringing basically filtering the water once it comes from Municipal and then you put in that fertigator so you have a fertilization injection system sort of

After you get to that filtration so then you’re actually re once you sort of strip everything out you have a little bit more control of the nutrients you’re adding back in is the fertigation attached to your irrigation system cuz I’m just actually thinking when we when we think about like the calcium or

Whatever in your water it could really corroe small irrigation line so is that fertigation line separate is it with the irrigation line it’s with the irrigation line so you begin up a great point which is that’s part of the maintenance you have to do for walls right is that the

Like every plant nothing is maintenance-free but especially with living walls there is system maintenance that you have to do and so we usually are cleaning the tanks out and sort of doing a flush on the walls to make sure we’re not getting those clogs in the

Lines at least once a year um and sometimes more I think especially because we do a lot of installations in different buildings around New York there’s no real consistency in what the water supply is so a building that you know we’re working on right now in dumbo

For whatever reason we see way more line clogs in that water supply than one that we do in Tribeca and so some of that is just you sort of have to test that over time but you need to set parameters in the beginning to say at least once a

Month you know we should be monitoring this checking doing just a manual run making sure everything’s running smoothly and at least once a year we have planted that we actually turn the system off empty everything out everything gets a deep clean the lines can actually get flushed with a

Basically a very diluted hydrogen peroxide to get rid of all those minerals and you sort of do these big runs and flushes just for that purpose but it’s mechanical equipment and and ultimately mechanical equipment does have like finite life so you can prolong it by maintaining it but eventually your

Pumps will fail um there will be some kind of issue happening um that you’ll have to you know just maintain and deal with with mechanical equipment over time great well thank you so much for these tips the green wall is totally on fleek and really love the trends that are

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