When drawing up contracts for office landscaping schemes of this kind the office chief should come to a clear understanding concerning plants that are likely to fail, so that they can be replaced without difficulty. No matter how wonderful the environment, maintenance and general conditions may be, it is almost inevitable that some plants will succumb.

No longer is it necessary to have a multitude of small offices segregated from one have become the fashion with filing cabinets, screens and foliage plants used to form divisions between departments, or individual areas.

The number of wicks will vary according to the size of the container – generally three or four are required for a container 2 ft. in diameter. A dipstick through the plastic supply pipe can be used to check when the water requires topping up.

The importance of landscaping office interiors with plants has gone sonic way beyond sending the junior to the nearest flower shop to purchase a rubber plant. Today there are specialists in the field who make the installation and maintenance of foliage plants in offices a full-time occupation.

It goes without saying that this is a most essential requirement in the hot, dry atmosphere of an office. It is also a very much better system than having the more conventional and simple containers for, at the hands of the inexperienced person, at home or in the office, plants seldom do as well as they might, as they are either parched from inadequate dribbles of water, or completely saturated from regular flooding of the compost.

For the plant maintenance man the advantage of all this is very obvious – instead of his staff paving twice-weekly visits to the many offices on his round they can reduce the frequency to about once each fortnight. On these visits the water level is topped up, the compost is fed and general maintenance and necessary plant replacements are seen to.