January is Quality of Life month and with sustainability playing an increasingly more important role in how commercial real estate companies invest in green performance, the benefits of landscaping has emerged as an actionable priority.
From site design and infrastructure to LEED considerations to amenities and workplace wellness, new research suggests that nature will have the largest and most easily quantifiable impact on quality of life.
Here’s how:
- Health & wellness
The Covid pandemic flipped perceptions of workplace norms, leading to a rethink of the role air quality, natural light and quality outdoor space influences health and well-being. This has led to reconfiguring landscaped areas for outdoor conferencing and working, creating walking trails and bike paths for fitness, building out green roofs and terraces for encourage social interaction, and increasing the number of trees.
- Sustainability
As a philosophy and a practice, sustainability has influenced the built environment for years. But with concerns around extreme weather events, climate action planning and the need for increased environmental resilience, landscaping has become an essential key performance indicator for driving occupancy, higher rents, higher tenant retention and higher property value – all while reducing energy use, waste, and environmental impacts.
Getting up to speed. What’s next?
Nature, by way of landscaping and its ability to refresh and revitalize, is an unparalleled remedy to urban stress. When implemented in a way that also protects environmental health, the benefits to human health increase exponentially. Ten things ELM can help you do now:
- Implement a water conservation and irrigation management plan, combined with low-water use landscape strategies and comprehensive guidelines for erosion control and storm water management.
- Reduce landfill waste through recycling and composting.
- Increase biodiversity, habitat health and plant life through best practices.
- Reduce chemical use.
- Improve soil health through mulching and microorganisms.
- Improve plant and pest management with biological controls, and beneficial insects.
- Create a long-range strategic landscape plan that includes ongoing landscape performance improvements.
- Transform underutilized areas into perennial meadows.
- Use advanced technologies for energy-efficiency and improved resource management.
- Create and maintain healthy and high-performing outdoor amenity spaces for people to spend more time in nature.
To learn more about how Eastern Land Management can improve quality of life through landscaping, contact company president Bruce Moore Jr. at (203) 316-5433.
Photo: Stamford Towers, Stamford Connecticut. A commercial landscape sustainably maintained by ELM for CBRE.
