Tips For Designing Landscaping That Boosts The Well Being Of Your Employees

If you are thinking about relandscaping the area around your office, consider exploring designs and plants that promise to boost the wellbeing of your employees. That way, you can beautify the outside of your property, while also helping your employees stay happier and healthier. Here are some tips to consider:

1. Create outdoor workspaces.

Consider adding outdoor work spaces to your landscaping. Businesses with outdoor work spaces to offer their employees report that these spaces stimulate creativity and make the office environment more upbeat.

Depending on your objectives, you could create a range of spaces. For example, you could make small, private workspaces lined with shrubs to absorb noises. Alternatively, you could create large areas for education, conferences and collaborative working. Remember to make sure that your wi-fi is strong enough to work outside your building as well.

2. Make your landscaping interactive.

In addition to or in lieu of adding outdoor work spaces to your office, consider making your landscaping interactive for employees in a fun way. For example, integrate a swimming pool, a frisbee golf course or a climbing wall into your landscaping, and let your employees exercise while on the clock. Exercise can help reduce stress and anxiety.

Alternatively, put in a fishing pond --it looks great, and fishing is also an anti-stress activity. You could even provide rods for your employees to grab over lunch hour.

If you really want to be revolutionary, add a community garden space. Gardening has also been linked to lower levels of depression and anxiety. As a bonus, it also gives your employees something meditative to do with their hands when they need to think. For example, if your employees have an idea percolating, they can head to the garden, do a bit of weeding and let the mental juices flow.

3. Select an engaging but soothing design.

Whether you are creating space or working, playing or just relaxing for a few minutes, you want a landscaping design that is both engaging and soothing. To be engaging on a sensual level, the design should include colors, textures and smells that reach out to your employees and hopefully distract them from their woes. Ideally, your landscaping should also change from season to season to help heighten interest in it.

However, to keep it soothing, you want designs that compliment each other. Ideally, you should work with a commercial landscaper who can help you avoid dissonance between plants and jarring transitions between areas. You want to balance intrigue with comfort and continuity.

4. Include flowers that improve well being.

In addition to the right design and the right amenities, you should also think about the types of plants you should include in your landscaping design. In particular, there are flowers that have been identified as depression fighters. These include lavender, mustard flower, peach flowers and sunflowers and even the buds on elm trees.

5. Orient the designs so they look good from inside.

When you are landscaping the front of an office building, it's easy to just focus on how the landscaping is going to look to passersby. However, you also need to consider what your employees can see from the inside of the office. Ideally, you want to create a design that looks beautiful from both inside and outside your building. For example, you want your employees to be able to see whole flower gardens, not just the back of a shrub pressed against their window.

This allows your employees to enjoy your landscaping even if they cannot get outside. Keep in mind that employees who have access to plants or windows, report higher job satisfaction than those who don't.