The Impact of Workplace Plants: Perception & Use

Interior planting has become increasingly popular in the working environment during the last 30 years, and its presence is believed to have psychological and physiological benefits. There are many claims in the literature that have not been substantiated by research. My thesis, titled Human Responses to Interior Planting, set out to establish why people need or want to have interior planting in their present-day buildings and to determine the possible psychological benefits to people of plants inside buildings.

Two separate studies were carried out:

The first study was a longitudinal case study in a hospital atrium using questionnaires and observations. This study tested the impact of interior planting on:

a) the way in which people used the atrium

b) people’s anxiety levels

c) people’s perception of the atrium

The second study was a laboratory study to test the impact of interior planting on recovery from attention and fatigue and used vigilance tests, including a proof reading.