In many offices today–especially those designed to look modern, think they are modern or hope they are modern–it is common to find plants dotted around. Some even cover an entire wall with an assortment of plants to give the workers a heightened sense of an artificial forest. Maybe this is to compensate for their minimal contact with the outdoors. Whatever it is, plants in the office are generally considered as something good for us.

Thinking about this, we are embarrassed to admit that like these people, we too wanted a lot of plants when we first moved into this office about 10 years ago, although the idea of “modernity” was not the goal but instead it was Clara’s love for plants. We flooded half the office with a variety of potted plants to take advantage of the abundant natural sunlight but we soon realized the problem; letting the sun in nourished the plants yet it puts us on a permanent squint, while closing the curtains spared our eyes but deprived the plants of the light they needed.

There is no way to make a good decision here but we try to look for a balance daily.

Most people think that having plants indoors brings about a visual pleasure, alongside claims that the air will be cleaner or that certain insect species and pests will stay away. For us, these same functions (aside from being “modern”) probably convinced us to introduce the plants to our office initially, but slowly, it became clear that there is something else: mess.

Real plants are messy; they shed leaves, flowers, soil and other unidentified substances both wet and dry. Sometimes, weird insects, quick-moving ants and certain pests appear overnight and can cause quite a problem if not properly handled. In this sense, it is not difficult to see that plants living inside our completely man-made interior spaces are as incompatible as a human being standing in the middle of the forest dressed from head to toe in brightly coloured hiking gear, spiked walking sticks in hand, talking loudly….

Funnily, we do not view this as a problem in our office. If anything, picking up bits of soil and small stones that are often found scattered around the base of the plant pot or having a dried, flattened leaf stuck to the sole of our bare foot brings a sensation of nature that goes beyond the sight of plants. It is almost as if the natural behaviour of plants are being tamed in pots while still retaining some semblance of “nature” for us to encounter! Experiencing this mess lowers our psychopathic need for order whenever we are in an artificial environment while hinting on what lies beyond the four walls. Maybe, a plant indoors has the ability to loosen the invisible boundary that we tend to draw between nature and man?

Sadly, the plants in our offices have mostly died over the past 10 years. Perhaps, the bad habit of constantly re-arranging our office space (sometimes, moving entire rooms) might have stressed out some of the plants, or at least affected the daily sun exposure that they had grown used to…Anyway, we try not to blame ourselves too much each time we have to clean up another dead plant pot and focus on the survivors. Today, the remaining plants that still accompany us are keeping well and we are silently thankful for their existence to remind us of a natural way to live without migrating into the forest…