Plant Facts & Benefits
Benefits of Living Green Walls
What are some of the benefits of living green walls or vertical gardens?
Indoors:
- Saves space by providing a large quantity of plants on walls in lightweight recyclable metals, no large pots or plant beds needed
- Cleans interior air space by removing VOCs and other harmful toxins like benzene and formaldehyde
- Ongoing scientific research indicates that plants have unique healing qualities and that integrating plants into our work and living environments provides health benefits
Outdoors:
- Cleans outside air of pollutants and offsets carbon footprint
- Acts as a sound reducing barrier
- Soil and plants are a natural filter that can clean the water that flows through the wall
- Insulates the building envelope year round
- Cools the building in the summer
- Can be designed to provide privacy
- Can provide new habitats by attracting beneficial insects
Green Walls and Green Roofs provide a number of environmental benefits for buildings, human health and biodiversity. Green Walls can qualify for LEED certification points from USGBC.
What are the benefits of plants?
Plants help clean the air indoors and outdoors by filtering air pollutants through their leaves, roots, the soil and microorganisms that live around their roots.
Plants have proven to be important life supporters in that they remove carbon dioxide from the air and release oxygen through the process of photosynthesis. Trace chemicals in the atmosphere are absorbed and biodegraded by plant leaves and roots, the soil, and micro-organisms. Virtually every tropical foliage and flowering plant works to remove pollutants from the interior environment, and particular plants are better at removing certain toxins. The studies found that one potted plant per 100 square feet of floor space can help clean the air in the average home or office, although the addition of more plants would increase the rate of pollutant removal.
What is Biophilia?
Biophilia: “The inhert human inclination to affiliate with the natural process and diversity instrumental in human health and well-being.” The term defined by Stephen R. Kellert.
Edward O.Wilson originally coined the term biophilia.
Bhiophilic Design: “Buildings and landscapes that enhance human physical and mental well-being by fostering positive connections between people and the nature in the places of cultural and ecological meaning and significance.” Stephen R. Kellert.
Recent article about plants:
“Common houseplants may help to clean the air you breathe every day, though NASA, along with the Associated Landscape Contractors of America, conducted studies during the 1980s that found a number of common houseplants act as air purifiers under controlled conditions.”
“The NASA studies experimented with various houseplants' ability to absorb three organic chemical compounds harmful to humans: benzene, formaldehyde and trichloroethylene. A follow-up study by NASA in 1989 indicated the soil and root system of the plants play a part in the reduction of some toxins from the air. In that study, the plants most successful in purifying the air were the ones in which the plants' foliage did not cover the potting soil, leaving the soil exposed to the air.”
By Mark Collins, The Daily Camera, Home and Garden. Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Helpful gardening resource: http://www.cmg.colostate.edu/
Health Effects Institute. Reports on air pollution: http://www.healtheffects.org/
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