Beyond the Plant Schedule: What ASLA’s Decarbonizing Guide Means for Interior Living Systems

The American Society of Landscape Architects’ updated Decarbonizing Specifications v2 focuses primarily on landscape architecture and exterior projects. But several of the ideas behind the guide are also worth considering inside the built environment—particularly the importance of making thoughtful decisions about living systems early in the design process.

ASLA’s guide looks at how specifications can influence a project’s carbon impact, from materials and sourcing to planting, transportation, construction, and long-term operations. It also makes an important point about plants: their environmental impact involves more than their ability to sequester carbon. How plants are grown, transported, installed, and maintained matters as well.

For architects, designers, specifiers, building professionals, and interiorscape professionals, that raises a useful question:

What happens when we apply that same lifecycle thinking to interior plantscapes?

It reinforces something professionals have experienced for years: Plants are more successful when they are considered during the design process rather than treated as decorative elements to be added after the space is largely complete.

Rethinking When Plants Enter the Conversation

On many projects, decisions about interior plants come relatively late. By then, lighting, HVAC, plumbing, structural considerations, circulation, and space planning may already be established.

That can leave an interiorscape professional working within conditions that were never designed with plants in mind.

Bringing plant expertise into the conversation earlier gives the design team more options. A living wall, for example, may require consideration of irrigation, drainage, supplemental lighting, electrical access, structural support, and maintenance access depending on the system selected. Large specimen plants may require adequate natural or supplemental light as well as sufficient space for installation and future growth.

Early collaboration can also help with plant selection and sourcing. Rather than choosing a plant primarily for its appearance and then trying to make the environment accommodate it, an interiorscape professional can help identify species suited to the actual conditions of the space.

This is where ASLA’s broader message about specification becomes especially relevant: decisions made during design can influence what happens throughout the life of a project.

Interior Plants Have a Lifecycle, Too

In its Trees and Plants (329000) section, ASLA describes plants as central to carbon sequestration while also acknowledging the embodied carbon associated with their production and transportation. The guide notes that nursery practices and ongoing maintenance can affect the overall carbon performance of planting projects.

That discussion is focused on landscape applications, so it should not be interpreted as a carbon assessment of interior plantscapes. It does, however, provide a useful framework for thinking about them.

Interior plant installations have their own lifecycle considerations. Plants must be grown and transported. Containers, growing media, irrigation components, lighting systems, and other materials may be part of the installation. Plants also require ongoing horticultural care and, at times, replacement.

The practical takeaway is less about assigning a carbon value to an indoor plant and more about designing living systems for longevity.

A plant selected for appropriate light, temperature, space, and maintenance conditions has a better opportunity to remain healthy over time. That benefits the plant, the building occupants, and those responsible for its care while also helping reduce unnecessary replacement and waste.

What Green Roofs Can Teach Us

One of the new sections in Decarbonizing Specifications v2 addresses Vegetated Roof Systems.

ASLA’s discussion is intentionally nuanced. Green roofs can provide benefits such as stormwater management, reduced rooftop temperatures, habitat, insulation, and additional green space, but their overall performance depends on the project. Structural requirements, climate, growing media, irrigation, plant selection, materials, and maintenance all influence the outcome.

The guide encourages project teams to start by identifying what they want the green roof to accomplish and then design the system around those goals.

There is a useful parallel for interior plantscapes.

A design team may envision a living wall, large specimen trees, planted dividers, or another prominent plant feature. Before determining exactly what that installation should look like, it can be helpful to understand the conditions surrounding it.

How much usable light will be available? What are the temperature and humidity conditions? How will the plants be irrigated? Can technicians reach the installation safely and efficiently? What plant material is appropriate for the location?

The technical requirements vary considerably from one system to another, but asking those questions early can help preserve the original design intent while giving the plants a better environment in which to succeed.

Maintenance Is Part of the Equation

ASLA also devotes attention to operations and maintenance, recommending that these considerations become part of the design process rather than something addressed only after construction.

For exterior landscapes, the guide discusses water conservation, smart irrigation, Integrated Pest Management, equipment, waste management, and maintenance training.

The specific practices for an interior plantscape are different, but the underlying principle translates well.

An interior plant installation continues to change after the project is completed. Plants grow. Seasonal light levels change. Irrigation equipment needs monitoring. Building use can change. HVAC conditions may affect locations. Plants need routine horticultural care.

A design that makes that work unnecessarily difficult can create challenges for everyone involved.

This is another area where an interiorscape professional can contribute during design—not only by recommending plants, but by helping the project team understand what will be required to care for the installation once the building is occupied.

 

Bringing Horticultural Expertise into the Design Process

Architects and interior designers bring expertise in buildings and spaces. Interiorscape professionals bring a different set of knowledge: how living plants respond to the environments created within those buildings.

Bringing those disciplines together earlier can help answer practical questions before they become costly problems.

Is there enough light for the plants shown in the rendering? Will supplemental lighting be necessary? Where will water come from? Is drainage needed for the selected system? Can the plants be installed through the available doors and elevators? How will technicians reach them for routine care? Are the specified plants commercially available in the sizes and quantities required?

Not every project will raise all these issues. The point is to identify the relevant ones while there is still an opportunity to address them.

Good plant specification requires more than choosing a species from a plant schedule. It requires understanding the living system around it.

From Exterior Landscapes to Interior Environments

ASLA’s publication also discusses nature-based solutions such as urban forests, wetlands, rain gardens, bioswales, and green roofs. These systems can perform environmental functions including stormwater management, habitat creation, carbon sequestration, and heat mitigation.

Interior plantscapes should not automatically be assigned those same environmental benefits. They operate at a different scale and serve different purposes.

Interior environments introduce another important part of the built-environment conversation: connecting people with nature in the places where they spend their time.

Research into biophilic design and exposure to nature continues to explore relationships with wellbeing, workplace experience, stress, attention, and other human outcomes. Interior plants are one tool designers can use as part of that larger biophilic approach.

That makes successful implementation important. If living plants are part of the design intent, creating conditions that allow them to remain healthy should be part of the design intent as well.

What Can Architects, Designers and Specifiers Take Away?

Decarbonizing Specifications v2 is not an interior plantscape specification guide, nor does ASLA present it as a universal specification standard. Its recommendations are intended to help professionals evaluate opportunities to reduce emissions and increase carbon sequestration based on the needs of individual projects.

Several principles in the publication are especially useful when thinking about interior living systems:

• Include plant expertise earlier. If plants are an important element of the design, involve an interiorscape professional while the conditions supporting them can still be influenced.
• Design for the actual environment. Plant selection should reflect available light, temperature, humidity, space, irrigation, and maintenance conditions.
• Think beyond installation. Consider how plants and their supporting systems will be maintained over the life of the project.
• Consider the complete system. Plants interact with containers, growing media, water, light, building systems, occupants, and maintenance teams.
• Use specifications to protect design intent. Clearly communicating the requirements of the living system can help prevent important horticultural considerations from being lost as a project moves from design through construction and operation.

Designing Living Systems That Last

The value of Decarbonizing Specifications v2 for professionals working with interior plants isn’t that an exterior landscape guide can simply be applied indoors. It can’t.

Its value is in the way it asks professionals to think about specification decisions: look beyond the finished product, consider lifecycle impacts, understand operating requirements, and involve the right expertise early enough to make a difference.

Those are worthwhile principles for anyone designing with living plants.

A successful interior plantscape should still look good on installation day. But the better test comes later: Are the plants healthy? Can the system be maintained effectively? Is it performing as the design team intended?

As biophilic design becomes more integrated into architecture and interiors, plant specification has an opportunity to become more integrated as well.

Building on ASLA’s emphasis on thoughtful specification, lifecycle performance, and early collaboration:

A strong plant schedule sets the foundation, but thoughtful specification considers the entire life of the living system. Engaging interiorscape professionals early helps bring the design vision to life and supports its success long after installation.

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