plantscaping

Party With Your Plants – It’s National Indoor Plant Week

| September 23, 2020 | Categories: Biophilia, Biophilic and Biophlic Design, Blog, Plants, Plantscaping
My plant friends and I are ready to live it up for National Indoor Plant Week! Photo: Jim Mumford
It’s officially National Indoor Plant Week. Yes, it’s a real thing! It’s right up there with Naked Outdoor Gardening Day in May. It is celebrated the third week of September every year. This is one holiday COVID-19 can’t ruin for us. Your indoor plants deserve a celebration. They’ve kept you happier and healthier during the pandemic. You don’t have to worry about social distancing with your indoor plants. You can gather and party all you want, no masks required! To Good Earth Plant Company, 2020 has been National Indoor Plant YEAR. People have purchased plants in record numbers. Nurseries and garden centers remained open as essential businesses.… Read More

#StayPlanted with Purpose

| August 26, 2020 | Categories: Blog, Plants, Plantscaping
Our donated plants find new homes with the new residents of the Alpha Project's brand new residence in Imperial Beach. #StayPlanted
This week, Good Earth Plant Company worked on one of its favorite assignments for the Alpha Project. A brand new Alpha Project homeless shelter opened in a completely renovated hotel in Imperial Beach.  It’s a safe and secure place focusing on housing families.  We provided a little extra plant love to warm up the new residences. We donated some of our client plant returns for common areas and hallways, and anywhere else Alpha Project wanted to put them. It gives us joy on so many levels. We re-home these plants where they can find a new purpose. It’s like adopting a new pet from a shelter.… Read More

Go Underground: How to Water Your Plants Using Sub-Irrigation

| August 19, 2020 | Categories: Blog, Plants, Plantscaping
Good Earth Plant Company’s advice on how to water your indoor plants hit pay dirt! Many of you read, commented, and shared the advice in our blog post last week. We are happy to help and thank you for passing our blogs on to your friends and family. The watering tips and methods we discussed all involve surface irrigation. Surface irrigation is any watering technique adding water to the soil from above the plant. Rain provides surface irrigation. But there’s one more way to water your container plants – so call this part three of our series about watering your plants.… Read More

Basic Watering Guide For Plants From Our Plant Stylists

| August 12, 2020 | Categories: Biophilic and Biophlic Design, Blog, Plants, Plantscaping
Good Earth Plant Company's plant stylists get asked about watering more than any other topic. Photo: Torsten Dettlaff/Pexels
In last week’s blog post, we shared tips from the Good Earth Plant Company experience on whether your plants like a drink of something other than water. Readers told us they enjoyed it – and then said “But we could really use more advice about watering our indoor plants.” If there is one thing we have heard over more than 40 years as plant stylists and indoor plant technicians, it’s this. People still aren’t sure how to water their plants. Proper watering goes hand in hand with proper placement for successful indoor plants. With people spending more time inside due to the coronavirus pandemic, and more picking up plants (see below) to keep them company, we’re following up with Part 2 in our advice series.… Read More

Indoor Plants and Living Walls Are Essential Workers Too

| July 22, 2020 | Categories: Blog, Living Walls, Nature and Wellbeing, Plantscaping
Horticultural technician Sophie Gonzalez hard at work wearing the new custom mask she designed!
According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, essential workers are those who conduct a range of operations and services that are typically “essential” to continue critical infrastructure operations. Critical infrastructure is a broad term including work sectors from energy to defense to agriculture. Most people think of law enforcement, firefighters, doctors and nurses, and other types of frontline first responders as essential workers. But hasn’t your definition changed over the past few months? I bet you’ll add grocery store workers, truck drivers, caregivers, and the people who make toilet paper to this list now. There are so many unsung heroes grinding away who make things work.… Read More

Here’s a Hot Tip: Add Humidity For A Healthier Office Space 

| June 17, 2020 | Categories: Blog, Nature and Wellbeing
Could raising indoor air humidity by using plants help prevent the spread of COVID-19? Some scientists now think so. Photo: Daria Shevtsova / Pexels
Are you a little anxious about returning to the office? You aren’t alone.  Several polls show people worry about being exposed to the coronavirus when they go back to the workplace. Depending on the poll, 60 to 75 percent of people surveyed say they’re worried about this, and worried about being exposed by their co-workers. It’s enough to make a person want to work from home forever. But this isn’t always possible or even a good idea long term. We understand how much a healthy workspace can make a difference at Good Earth Plant Company. We have been working with clients to improve the health and wellbeing of their employees and visitors in all kinds of indoor spaces for more than four decades!… Read More

Be Like Nature, My Friend

| June 1, 2020 | Categories: Biophilic and Biophlic Design, Blog, Nature and Wellbeing, Plants, Plantscaping
We have so much to learn from the resilience of Nature. Photo: Quinton Delman/Pixabay
Is 2020 over yet? The situation in our country and in our communities leaves me nearly speechless. It has been a rough year. First, the coronavirus hit. Second, the U.S. economy took a dive, causing unemployment so high it didn’t even seem real. Then, just as it seemed like we might get through the worse of the pandemic crisis, the senseless murder of an African-American man in Minneapolis set off a chain reaction across the U.S. of anger and hurt, including in my home town — specifically the city of La Mesa, California. Many people staged peaceful protests. Some senseless opportunists used the protests as cover to pillage innocent business owners and communities.… Read More

Let’s Clear the Air

| March 11, 2020 | Categories: Blog, Nature and Wellbeing, Plants, Plantscaping
In the plantscaping business, we've always been concerned about clean indoor enviroments. Photo: Mylene2401/Pixabay
Chances are good you’re spending a lot more time indoors right now. But here is the reality: it’s nothing new. Ongoing research by the Environmental Protection Agency reveals some shocking stats: Americans spend more than 90 percent of their time indoors. If you’re very young or older, you tend to spend even more time indoors. There are a lot of reasons people are anxious about health issues today. But some of us have been concerned for a long time. Here’s why: indoor air can be two to five times more polluted than our air outdoors. This comes as a surprise to many people.… Read More

Time for a Field Trip

| March 4, 2020 | Categories: Blog
Didn’t you love class field trips when you were a kid? I know I sure did! Anything to get out of the classroom and outside to see some cool things. This hasn’t really changed much now that many of us are trapped inside offices. It’s the same clock ticking down as you try to focus when there are so many more interesting things going on outside. It even happens at Good Earth Plant Company once in a while. We forget to take time to get out and get a fresh perspective. So our design and buying team of Rachel Hecathorn and Cassidy Braddy and I took a field trip recently to two of our favorite commercial nurseries in the North Inland area of San Diego County.… Read More

Indoor Plant Trends Coming At You In 2020

| January 24, 2020 | Categories: Blog, Green Living, Nature and Wellbeing, Plants, Plantscaping
We love attending the Tropical Plants International Expo each January, and have lots of cool plant trends to share with you.
We all have our New Year traditions. Mine involves traveling across the country to join my Plantscaping industry colleagues from 45 states and 37 different countries at the Tropical Plants International Expo, AKA TPIE. It’s a blast for me to see all the new concepts and trends in indoor plant production, presentation, and design. There is so much to see, sometimes I worry whether my head might explode! (Spoiler – it didn’t happen). When you have been in business four decades, you see certain concepts and ideas recycled from time to time. We love seeing great old ideas reinvented. We also see the creative use of new technology and new designs.… Read More