Hotel interior landscape schemes in the USA

We are grateful to Hammer Design Landscape Architects for permission to use these images of hotel interiors in the USA. Both schemes were completed in the 1990s, but show very different styles.

The lobby of the Guest Quarters Suite Hotel in Santa Monica, California uses tall specimen palms to help scale down the height of the atrium. As there was a car park directly beneath the floor of the hotel lobby, heavy live plants could not be used. These palms are fabricated using preserved palm fronds attached to a PVC pipe to which leaf sheaths from real trees have been attached. These fabricated trees are only one tenth the weight of live plants of the same size. The underplanting is all live.

On the opposite coast of the USA is the Westin Hotel in Stamford, Connecticut. This hotel was modernized in 1999 and now includes these amazing living indoor hedges. The owners were preparing to install a fabricated hedge made from plywood with polyester foliage when they contacted Hammer Design to see whether a live hedge could be made. The hedges were made from a plywood core which contained an irrigation system. On the outside of the core is a wire frame into which sphagnum moss is packed to provide an anchor for the creeping fig (Ficus pumila), which covers the surface. The interior of this hotel has approximately 60 metres (180 ft) of hedging, some of which is over 2.5m (7 ft) tall.