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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Listen Up, Bosses: Take Your Stressed Workers To Nurseries WSU Study Shows Indoor Plants Help Increase Productivity

Associated Press

Employers who want happier and more productive workers may want to visit a greenhouse.

Indoor plants help improve worker productivity and reduce stress, a new Washington State University study shows.

This is nothing new to designers of hotel lobbies, medical offices and fern bars, but the study purports to be the first offering proof that plants are good for the workplace.

“They not only make you feel better, but increase productivity. That is new,” said scientist Virginia Lohr of WSU’s Department of Horticulture, who conducted the research.

The study was financed by The Horticultural Research Institute, a trade group for the plant and landscape industry. Since nurseries would benefit from increased sales, that makes the findings subject to healthy skepticism.

But Lohr said care was taken so that subjects were not aware of the purpose of the study. She noted the research also made it through peer review - oversight by other scientists to test its validity.

The research found that workers in rooms with plants were more productive and felt more attentive. And while their blood pressure increased as they conducted tasks, it increased less on average.

There is no denying that plants make people feel better, though researchers can’t explain how.

Lohr suspects there may be an evolutionary link.

“It’s a survival skill, maybe,” she said. “A habitat with plants is better for people to survive in, rather than a moonscape.”

Lohr just published another study showing that live plants reduce dust in rooms. Plants also increase relative humidity as moisture on the leaves evaporates, she said.

“Plants are not just fluff,” Lohr said. “We have felt … that having plants around us is vital to our well-being.”

The study made sense to an employee of the Plant Farm in Spokane, who identified herself only as Martha.

“I work here and I feel pretty good,” she said. “This is one of the lowest-stress jobs I’ve ever had.”

The most popular indoor plants for offices include pothos, ivy, rhododendrons and spider plants, which thrive in low light, Martha said.

Lohr said the study did not consider which particular plants made workers the most productive.

The WSU study took 96 volunteers from an agriculture economics class, placed them in a drab computer lab without windows, and gave them some computer tasks to perform. The exercises involved identifying common symbols that randomly appeared on a computer screen.

Groups of up to eight people were tested at a time, some in the room with plants and some in the room without plants.

The study found worker productivity increased 12 percent when people performed computer tasks in the room with plants, compared with workers who performed the same tasks when the room was plantless.

Blood pressure for members of both groups averaged roughly the same - about 115 - before the test.