the plantman limited -united kingdom

Category: Standalone

Working with Berkley Homes, St James Group the developer and Johnson Naylor the interior designers, The Plantman & Co delivered, installed and maintain an impressive internal planting scheme throughout the estate of White City Living. White City Living is in the heart of West London with over 2,500 homes. Set within eight acres of parks and gardens, surrounded by world-class retail, entertainment, education, and culture.

The brief was to provide internal planting for the concierge, resident\’s entrance’s for each building, private club facilities, pool, spa, gym and fitness centre as well as lounges for both business and leisure and the marketing suite that would work in harmony with the external landscaping.

Taking everything into account, the architecture, the landscape and the client’s wishes we created a design using clay planters from Atelier Verkant, a natural material which is simple and robust. We brought the landscape inside the work and home places creating shapes with the planters, with different textures and color finishes in white, grey and black, planted with a variety of lush, green and leafy tropical plants up to 4m in height.

The planting, plants reflect the design of the Asian Styled gardens, Murdoch Wickham, the landscape architects drew inspiration for the external landscape design from the Japan British exhibition of 1910. Victorian plant hunters inspired exotic and botanical planting. A green and leafy residential oasis has been created.

The planting has been delivered and installed in phase’s, beginning in January 2021. The main challenge being delivering and installing internal plants in the middle of winter and onto a building site that wasn’t fully ready. All the common areas are also unheated, they just maintain an ambient temperature of bwteen 16-20c. Despite the cold temparatures, builders, dust and broken doors being left open all day, the plants have survived and now thrive. Special mention must go to Maria Alvarez who originally maintained the planting from the first day of Installation and Mandy Clarkson who is now responsible for the ongoing maintenance of the planting. The replacement rate for the planting is less than 2% which is testament to their care and skill in looking after the planting. (We lost some plants in December 2022 when temparatures dropped to -5c for a week for the Phase 3 planting, despite no heating we had to install plants as the building was being opened to residents). After some additional heating was provided we replanted and the planting is now fine!

Koberg BV from the Netherlands provided all of the plants, with the larger specimen plants being hand picked and reserved prior to delivery and planting. Atlier Verkant provided the planters. Plants all planted in peat free compost with a surface dressing of LECA, clay pebbles. We are currently preparing for further planting for completion of Phase 4.

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