Since 2008, Gerard Verge and his team at Indoor Plant Solutions have been the trusted indoor plant experts for the University of Wollongong’s Sydney Campus, ensuring their spaces stay lush and inviting.
In mid-2024, they contacted us about an exciting opportunity. The university was moving to a much larger location, eight times larger than its present campus, and they needed a fresh, green transformation to match!
The Major Challenges
The university needed 98% of its plants installed into custom furniture and joinery, which is never as straightforward as it sounds. These structures are rarely waterproofed, and their dimensions often don’t match standard-sized grow pots. This has inspired us to devise creative and innovative ways to fulfil the project based on the client’s expectations.
The university had a specific aesthetic in mind: lush, green textures with minimal colour variation to complement their earthy-toned palette. However, with it being winter, there was limited plant availability due to the slower growth rates. Oh, and did we mention the tight deadline? The installation had to be completed in a single Saturday session to avoid disrupting students and staff.
Solution
Here’s how we tackled the challenge:
- Waterproofing Woes: The custom joinery wasn’t built to hold plants directly because it lacked both adequate waterproofing and top plates (which help stabilise plants and hold top dressing like mulch). Our fix? We used completely sealed plastic pots to house the plants within the joinery while creating a fully mature planting feature. To keep things looking natural, we added moss as a top dressing to cover the soil, hiding any visible pots or inner lining.
- Winter Plant Selection: Our ability to fulfil large-scale plant orders at short notice, even during the slower winter growing season, was a key advantage in this project. Thanks to our sister company, The Grow Centre, we had exclusive access to a wider variety of plants that were otherwise scarce at this time of year. This allowed us to handpick the perfect mix of species that thrived in winter and matched the university’s strict aesthetic requirements—something that would have been significantly more challenging for other suppliers.
- Minimal Disruption: We scheduled the installation for early Saturday morning to keep disruption to an absolute minimum. While a few key university members met us on-site, our team completed the job smoothly without any mess, hazards, or interruptions for people.
Benefits
The result was a stunning interior filled with thriving greenery and welcoming spaces that perfectly complemented the university’s design vision. The University of Wollongong loved the outcome and appreciated our creative approach to problem-solving. More importantly, our ability to rapidly source and install high-quality plants—despite the seasonal constraints—highlighted our expertise in managing large-scale projects under tight deadlines. This reinforced why Indoor Plant Solutions is a trusted partner for businesses needing reliable, high-volume plant installations with zero compromises on quality.
Our ability to source the perfect plants during winter impressed them, highlighting our expert plant selection. Even better was our swift response to a large-scale installation at such short notice. We delivered exactly what the client wanted – on time and hassle-free.
With another successful project in the books, Indoor Plant Solutions continues to prove that no challenge is too big (or too green) for us to handle!
Whether it’s a time-sensitive installation or a large-scale transformation, Indoor Plant Solutions delivers tailored, high-quality plant solutions—even in challenging seasons. Contact us to bring your green vision to life, regardless of the scale or season.
