by Brianna Crandall — March 4, 2016—The Leckie Elementary School in Washington, DC, recently got a green makeover. The U.S. Green Building Council’s Center for Green Schools arranged for Suite Plants to donate eight of their LiveFence living green walls to Leckie Elementary School. Students, teachers, staff and volunteers came together for a community build project to construct custom rolling wooden planter boxes for the green walls.
Students, teachers, staff and volunteers came together for a community build project to construct custom rolling wooden planter boxes for the green walls.
The Suite Plants ivy plant walls had been used a few weeks earlier as decoration in an education room at USGBC’s Greenbuild International Conference & Expo. Instead of shipping the LiveFence walls back to the company’s greenhouse, and thereby increasing the carbon footprint, a “greener” solution was to find a local home.
Leckie Elementary School Principal Atasha James comments, “Installing the living walls brought life and better air into our school. They improved the sterile and industrial learning environment at Leckie.”
Walls used to educate Greenbuild attendees are now bringing “life and better air” to Leckie.
Living walls act as a natural air purification system by filtering out airborne contaminants, pumping out oxygen to revitalize the air and even regulating humidity levels, which has been shown to reduce the effects of the flu, according to Suite Plants. Numerous studies have demonstrated that living walls have an overwhelmingly positive effect on building occupants by increasing productivity, improving air quality, reducing stress levels, improving cognitive function and even increasing creativity.
The ivy plant walls create a warm and welcoming environment in the school and connect students with nature. This “biophilic design” concept, that humans crave a connection to nature and perform better when surrounded by natural elements that mimic the outdoor environment, has been incorporated into a growing number of buildings for leading organizations, such as the living wall installations at Google and Whole Foods, the company points out.
Suite Plants, a family-owned and operated business based in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York, aims to bring people closer to nature and improve their living and working environments with the addition of living plant walls. Suite Plants manufactures a full range of indoor and outdoor living green wall products for North America.
