Artificial, replica, fake or faux – whatever you want to call them there are situations where artificial plants are better than their real live counterparts. While it’s true fake plants can’t remove toxins from the air or increase the humidity of a room, they still bring colour and texture to interior décor. What’s more, with significant advances in the quality of faux plants, you’ll often see people rubbing the leaves between their fingers, musing aloud ‘Is that real?’

Here are a few reasons then why you might want to consider non-natural foliage in your office environment.

Limited light

To survive, plants require sunlight, carbon dioxide and water. While certain plants can survive in relatively low light levels, some offices are just too dark for real tropical plants to thrive. In these situations, faux plants come into their own. With no requirement to feed and hence no need for natural light, artificial plants can be utilised to add greenery to even the gloomiest of rooms.

Name a plant, any plant?

Not only can replica plants be installed in dark areas, in terms of choice the world’s your oyster with high quality artificial plants available for every variety imaginable. In offices where light levels are high, the choice of plants can still be restricted depending on variables such as the amount of direct sunlight, temperature, people traffic in the area and container size. These limiting factors are greatly reduced when using replica foliage, allowing you to choose plant material to meet your aesthetic desires.

Well-being

The hypothesis of biophilia, suggests that we humans have an innate need to connect with nature. So, for example, with plants! In recent years biophilic design, has advocated the incorporation of plants in indoor environments to boost mood and improve morale. Studies have shown that looking at plants can improve concentration levels and productivity. But get this, the plants don’t always necessarily need to be real. If people don’t associate with the plants as fake, then just being in the presence of greenery can have a positive effect and combined with other natural materials such as wood or moss the impact can be significant. So, where the environment might not be conducive to live plants it can still pay to install artificial.

The bottom line

One of the main benefits of installing artificial plants is of course that they require very little maintenance. A 6-monthly visit to clean leaves and check for any damage will suffice, compared to the real deal which requires 3-weekly visits to water, feed, clean, prune and check for pests and diseases.

Pest free

Talking of bugs, with no damp, cosy soil for pests to lay their eggs, replica plants are blissfully bug free, so you won’t get team members complaining about fruit flies in the office.

If you previously dropped the idea of live planting for your interior space, but see an opportunity for artificial as an alternative, get in touch today and we’ll be happy to chat through some ideas with you.

Call 0808 100 3120 or e-mail enquiries@gpplantscape.com.