Eleanor Care Head Office

A full planting scheme for Eleanor Care's head office in Bromley — reception, the open plan floor, the breakout, the meeting rooms and the chief executive's office — specified, planted and installed by us in early 2025.

Planting at three heights

Most office schemes happen at floor level. A few large specimens, some smaller pieces on cabinets and desks, and everything above waist height left to the ceiling tiles.

Here the planting works at three heights: specimen trees standing on the floor, planters mounted on the wall at eye level, and hanging baskets above the breakout. The wall and the ceiling are space nobody was using, so none of it costs the floorplate anything — and it is the difference between an office with plants in it and an office that feels planted.

How the scheme is built

Statement plants hold reception and the circulation routes — giant white bird of paradise, a tall thin-stemmed rubber tree, branched corn trees, kentia and lady palms, and a multi-stemmed manila palm. Tall enough to read across an open floor rather than disappear behind a monitor.

Clusters do the close work on cabinets, shelves and low units — snake plant, cast iron plant, satin pothos, devil's ivy, and Swiss cheese plants trained up moss poles. Grouped in threes and fives rather than one plant per surface, which is the single easiest thing to get wrong and the single biggest improvement when it is right.

Wall planters in a stepped run of sizes, mixed trailing planting in each, so the wall greens without the cost, the plumbing or the fragility of a living wall system. If something fails here it is one plant, not a maintenance event.

The breakout gets its own treatment. Tall trough planters, lushly planted, give the area edges without anybody building any; hanging baskets above bring the ceiling down and make a large room feel like somewhere you would choose to sit rather than somewhere you were sent.

The chief executive's office takes a full fiddle-leaf fig in a statement lava urn — the one room in the building where a single plant does all the work.

Planted on hydroculture

Almost everything in the building is potted into clay granules rather than compost. Hydroculture holds water in the granules and lets the roots draw what they need, which flattens out the two things that actually kill office plants: the fortnight when everyone is too busy to think about them, and the enthusiast who empties a jug into everything on a Friday.

It is a slightly higher cost at install and a considerably lower one over the life of the scheme — which matters most in a building where the planting has to hold up between visits rather than because of them.

Planning something similar?

We specify, plant and install schemes like this across London and the South East, with or without an ongoing maintenance contract.

Credits

Client: Eleanor Care
Planting: Plant Drop
Plant consultant: Dom Butler