What would you feel if you could look out of your window at work and see a well-tended garden including wild flowers, organically grown vegetables, even a bee hive? What would you feel if you could spend time in this garden, as a kind of natural breakout area?
Corporate gardens are on the rise. They are already an established trend in American cities and now there’s evidence that more UK companies are creating them.
Exploring Greener Office Spaces
“Corporate gardens are helping to rejuvenate city spaces, improving the corporate image while offering unique benefits to staff,” explains Ajaz Haq, from Form Interior Contracts, who specialise in workplace design.
“Corporate gardens can, quite literally, make dead spaces come alive. They make spaces attractive and gives them a definite purpose, as well as being aesthetically pleasing and helping to offset the concrete and glass building structures and surfaces”, Ajaz continues.
Research commissioned for the Forestry Commission indicates that outdoor, natural spaces help employees concentrate better when they are back at their workstations. Corporate gardens, in this context, become a kind of natural breakout area, and can echo the multi-functionality of such a shared space.
Employee Growth
“Encouraging employees to grow their own organic vegetables in corporate gardens also helps with engagement, as well as healthier eating habits”, says Ajaz.
“The outdoor space helps to foster creativity and offers people a bit of space away from the bustle of the office”
For those workplaces with more restricted opportunities, they can still take comfort in research from scientists at Exeter University, who found that the presence of plants in the workplace can increase productivity and wellbeing by as much as 30%.
Ajaz concludes, “Even if your business does not currently have the resources for a corporate garden, you can still help your employees, and improve your corporate culture, by bringing the outside in and having more greenery in your workplace.”
To discover how to improve your employee engagement, culture and productivity, please call Form Interior Contracts on 0161 410 0010.
