Live indoor plant displays require regular maintenance to keep them alive, healthy and attractive.  Depending on the type of display and the way the plants are cultured, such maintenance may be required between 15 and 30 times a year.

For plants in floor-standing containers, this should pose no problem.  Plant service technicians can attend to the plants during normal working hours or at any time when the building is open.  As long as there is a water supply and adequate provision for safe working, there should be little to worry about.

However, if there are plant displays in difficult to access places, provision must be made for their safe installation and ongoing maintenance.

High level plant displays

Many atriums and shopping centres make use of high level planting.  This is often in the form of balconies, window boxes (interior as well as on the outside of a building), hanging baskets (both indoors and outside) or plants displays suspended from a wall.  Such displays frequently include plants with a trailing habit with foliage that scrambles over a surface and either climbs up a wall or trails over the edge.

Possible solutions

There are several different methods of providing access to high level displays.  However, they are all governed by health and safety legislation and safe working procedures.  More information on health and safety when working at height can be found in Module 4: Health, safety and the environment.

The first choice of equipment must be a stable, firm platform fitted with guard rails and toe boards, such as a scaffold tower or mobile elevating work platform (e.g. scissor lift, cherry picker, etc.).  This type of equipment is suitable in most atriums and shopping centres where there is adequate floor space at the lower level to accommodate the platform.

In some locations, such as the situation illustrated above, a suspended cradle is ideal.  This equipment would normally be provided by the building managers rather than a plant maintenance contractor as it is built in to the fabric of the building.

In some locations, there is ample space to work directly in the high level bed and there will be access through a service door to the plants.  However, such places usually do not have a  protected edge at the front of the bed, so provision must be made for a fall-arrest harness system with enough attachment points to allow good access to the whole work area.