Few things rouse our appreciation for nature as much as spending every day in an office. Employees with windows that overlook vegetation report themselves much more satisfied than those with a view of other buildings and sidewalks. Workers in windowless offices tend to hang pictures “dominated by nature themes,” according to one scientific survey. They also have five times greater odds of buying plants to put around their workspace, according to another.

There’s a long line of evidence tracing how the brain benefits from nature.

Desk plants may spruce up a place, but whether they have psychological powers in addition to visual charm is another matter. Over the course of two recent studies, a research team led by scholars from Norway tested the effect of desk plants on worker productivity. To simulate a work environment, the researchers issued an attention task that required test participants to read several sentences on a computer screen and remember the final word in each.





In the first study, published in 2011, some of the test participants performed the reading task while sitting at a basic wooden desk with nothing around it. The others did the same task at a desk surrounded by office flowers and foliage. Results of the experiment were quite clear: workers at the desk with plants improved their scores on the task the second time around; workers at the empty desk did not.

Editor’s Note 01/01/14 Happy New Year! We’re saying good-bye to 2013 by revisiting some of our favorite stories of the year. Enjoy.

The second study, published this summer, reached similar conclusions in slightly different settings. Once again, test participants at a desk with flowers and plants showed more improvement on the attention task than those sitting at an empty desk. (Inanimate objects also improved task performance, though this might have been a statistical artifact of the dull setting.) Workers at a desk with plants and a window view had an additional cognitive boost.

Ruth K. Raanaas of the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, a collaborator on both studies, says office plants may be a simple, cost-effective way to keep workers satisfied and focused. “Most people spend a large proportion of their life at work,” Raanaas tells Co.Design, “so even small effects may have great practical significance when aggregated over employees and time of employment.”

The new work adds to a long line of evidence tracing how the brain benefits from nature. Brief walks in the park help a person focus on a task, glimpses of trees reduce a driver’s road rage, views of vegetation raise a hospital patient’s spirits. These effects occur in smaller doses even when patches of nature are diluted by the built environment or broadcast on a plasma screen. Mere “pockets of green” in otherwise drab settings can enhance self-control and inhibit aggression.