Can you save money on your interior landscape maintenance?
Well, that’s a question which is being asked more and more. The impact of Covid-19 and inflation has touched us all. As business begins to plan for the future workplace, the health and well-being of employees are at the forefront of everyone’s mind, but this needs to be realised with optimised cost efficiencies.
With almost 2,000 corporate clients that rely on us to provide excellent plant maintenance for their offices, retail, leisure, food and beverage and hospitality businesses, we pride ourselves on our ability not just to deliver a market-leading service but also sound advice.
The two main factors that will impact the life cycle cost of your interior environment are:
- The quality of service
- The initial design
Landscape maintenance for corporate HQs, restaurants, and hotels should ensure interior plants remain healthy. Often, when evaluating the commercial and technical strengths of a maintenance service company, at times like these, the commercial concerns outweigh the technical.
This type of thinking leads to a false sense of saving money.
When considering the quality of service for professional interior maintenance services, you should consider:
- Do technicians have a thorough understanding of how to treat all plants on your property?
- Will the service provider communicate effectively with you and resolve problems?
- Does the landscape maintenance company offer any guarantee for your plants throughout the contract?
- If so, will they replace like-for-like plants for your interior in the event of plant mortality?
- Do the technicians present themselves professionally to ensure your guest and employee experiences are not adversely affected?
- Will your maintenance provider clearly explain challenges and solutions?
If the answer to any of these questions is no, you will, in a relatively short period of time, find that your plants slowly deteriorate and degrade the environment in which you have invested so much. At this point, you will have three choices:
- Retain the degraded plants and negatively impact your environment
- Remove all the plants and therefore remove the connection to nature that is so important for wellbeing
- Re-invest in the purchase of new plants and replace all of these at your cost.
If, as most people do, you are forced to choose option three and have to repurchase plants, this investment is significant.
By selecting a partner that can answer yes to all of the considerations you are making, not only will your environment always be healthy, but you are assured that you never need to reinvest in it in the future.
The second most costly impact on interior landscape maintenance is design.
There are great designers in the region, and we work with many of them. Often clients and designers come to Planters for specific guidance on plant selection, understanding that making mistakes at this point can dramatically impact the lifecycle cost of a property.
If you are in a design phase and have been presented with plants as part of a design concept, it is always worth asking if this design has been optimised to reduce maintenance costs.
If so, your service provider should have considered three main factors:
- Light conditions
This is an often misunderstood problem. There are thousands of plant species and size varieties regularly used in interior spaces. Some prefer high light, some prefer low light, and for other interior plants, the sweet spot is somewhere just in the middle.
Being able to review a design and predict internal light conditions is an underrated skill and one rarely held by someone without a horticulture background.
- Ambient temperature
Interior plants can tolerate a relatively wide range of temperatures. However, sudden changes in this can have drastic effects. If your maintenance provider is sourcing plants correctly, they will already have acclimatised to being kept in air-conditioned spaces.
If, however, you know that the design will lead to a drastic change in the air temperature (next to a door that will be regularly opened for long periods, in an area where AC will be kept off for extended periods etc)
- Soil
So you are looking at a beautiful design drawing, and the impact of lush green foliage makes you feel connected to nature. But have you looked at what it's planted in?
Soil depth and water drainage are often forgotten about. If roots aren’t allowed to grow or are forced to sit in water, they will suffer.
Your design team should be able to answer these questions for every plant species that you love.
So in answer to the question “Can you save money on landscape maintenance?” the answer is yes.
Get expert design advice to minimise the lifecycle cost of your environment and ensure your maintenance provider does offer a technically excellent service. You should be able to sit back, relax and enjoy watching your plants grow.
If you have any problem with your corporate environment that you need help with, please contact us.
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