It’s that time of year again. The pumpkin spice lattes are steaming and you may have the irresistible urge to break out the sweaters and your favorite soup recipes. Fall is officially here.

We hit a few midstate stores and stopped by the Home Design Remodeling Expo at the State Farm Show Complex earlier this month to get the latest on fall trends for your home. Whether you’re looking to do some seasonal decorating that will last through Thanksgiving or you’re planning some home overhauls in time for the holidays, we’ve got what’s hot for autumn.

Bringing fall indoors

Was it too hot this summer to even think about burning anything but citronella candles? Now that fall is here, it’s a great time to break out some autumnal scents around the house. The scents fill your home, and the vibrant fall colors add an accent all their own.

Soften up your home’s living spaces with vibrant throws, pillows and draperies. Think scarlets, rusts and yellows for the best pop of color.

Another great way to highlight the season is by bringing fall to your dining room table. Swap out your everyday dishes for place settings in shades of pumpkin or eggplant or pickup some fall-themed serveware for your next get-together. Don’t forget to use it for Thanksgiving, too.

If you don’t feel like shopping for new dishes, make a fall-themed centerpiece for your table or mantel. Check out Better Homes and Gardens slideshow or Pinterest for ideas.

Get seasonal outside

While your summer blooms may have died off, there’s still a great way to work in some color among the evergreens in your flowerbeds. Add fall accents such as gourds and pumpkins and small hay bales next to your evergreens outside. Instant fall landscaping!

Nothing says fall like mounds of mums, so hit up your local greenhouse and take your pick of their colorful selection of this fall favorite.

• Ashcombe Farm Greenhouses in Monroe Township

• Stauffers of Kissel Hill in multiple locations

• Frey’s Greenhouse in North Cornwall Township

Renovate with the season

Fall is a time when many homeowners start thinking about renovations they’d like to do before their extended family descends for the holidays. Popular rooms to upgrade are kitchens — think dark granite countertops — and baths — time for a new stone-look surround?

It’s not too late to think about the outdoors, too. Fall is a great time to add that patio that you didn’t have time for this summer. The weather is still warm enough and the endless parade of summer activities is finally over … well, unless they’ve been replaced with kids’ school activities.

Don’t think that you’re limited to paver designs. There are also stamped concrete and stone options that may better suit your home. You’ll increase your entertaining space and your home’s value.

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Several of the commissioners also noted that donors who contributed to the development of Barnum Park in 2009 were repeatedly reminded of those guidelines.

“I’m a little concerned about the process and the precedent of an individual who has money determining something to go in a public park,” Commissioner Rackeline Hoff said at the meeting. “If he wants to give the money as a gift, that’s one thing. But to come up with an idea on his own, and to get to the point where he’s picking out the rocks that are going in, it seems to me it progressed too far before the commission got involved.”

A PASSION FOR PARKS

Lasser was in France for business Monday and unable to attend the meeting. Here’s how he describes the project in his letter:

“The design of the garden will be Japanese-inspired. It will contain stone paths; a dry stream; hills formed by boulders; specimen conifers, Japanese maples, ground cover, and oriental grasses; boulder and rock groupings conforming to principles of Japanese garden design; and Japanese granite ‘lanterns.’ There will be no water.”

City Commissioner Tom McDaniel, an accomplished gardener himself, said he became involved in the project 6-7 weeks ago and actually looked at the boulders Lasser wanted to purchase. He also walked the park with him.

McDaniel said Lasser has a lot of good ideas for the city’s park system. A possible future donation, for example, would be for a foot bridge over the Rouge River to connect Linden Park and Linn Smith Park.

“He loves Birmingham and he has a particular eye for a lot of our parks,” McDaniel said.

Over the past year, Lasser has donated 40 trees to the city which were planted at Linden Park. He planned to purchase the rocks and boulders from American Aggregate at a bargain price of $10 per ton. The conifers would have been purchased from vendors that have existing accounts with the city.

Birmingham residents Patricia Bordman and Anne Bray also spoke up at the meeting, against the project. Their main concern was the planting of non-native trees and shrubs in the park.

Bordman pointed to the city’s master park plan and how it emphasizes the planting of “native Michigan plants.” The reason behind that is sustainability: the local insect population lives off the native plants, which in turn provides nourishment to other creatures along the Rouge corridor.

“The fewer the native plants, the fewer the insects, the fewer the birds, frogs and toads,” Bordman told the commission.

Bray also talked about the efforts to bolster the Rouge Corridor with native plantings. She even took exception to some of the non-native trees Lasser donated to Linden, and suggested the city remove them.

Overall, the tone of the meeting was appreciative. But commissioners – and residents – stood firm in their belief that a process was in place which needs to be followed.

It’s just a matter of principle.

When budgets are squeezed the office greenery is the first thing to get axed. But is this just? Kenneth Freeman explains why entrepreneurs ought to be spending their cash on plants for the office.

There is plenty of evidence to show that well-being at work affects efficiency and productivity. We know, from research literature, that physical and psychological comfort has a direct impact on it, and it’s influenced by the management of space in the workplace.

Well-being is a difficult concept to define. We probably have an instinctive idea of what well-being feels like, but how do we quantify it and know how it is composed? Martin Seligman, a well-known psychologist, has broken the concept of well-being down into five distinct elements of positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning and achievement.  It is not inconceivable to recognise that all five of those elements, and especially the first three, can be can be affected by the way workplaces are managed.

So, what has all this to do with interior plants? One way to improve well-being is to ensure the working environment is designed and managed in such a way as to encourage people to thrive, and an effective way to do that is to bring together some ideas developed over the last few years by psychologists, biologists, architects and designers.

Research carried out by Craig Knight and Tom Postmes at the Universities of Exeter and Groeningen has shown that enrichment of spaces with items such as plants and art, or even fragrance, enables people to realise a sense of their own identity, which brings about improvements in productivity, engagement and well-being. Furthermore, a degree of choice by office workers in the way that such enrichment is implemented raises productivity, engagement and well-being even more. 

Independently of this research, work carried out in the 1980s and 1990s by Roger Ulrich has shown significant health and well-being benefits (mainly in terms of recovery from illness) when people are exposed to scenes of nature or views to gardens or plant displays. We also know from this, that enrichment of the environment with nature (plants, scenes of nature, views into gardens) is more effective at increasing well-being than enrichment and empowerment with abstract objects. There is a huge body of scientific literature showing that complaints associated with symptoms of sick-building syndrome (SBS) are reduced when interior plants are brought into buildings. Such effects were initially thought to be related to the physical characteristics of plants, but the main benefits seem to be psychological.

Simple pleasures such as a walk in the woods or a visit to a park have been shown to reduce stress and feelings of anxiety. Anti-social behaviour in inner cities has been linked to the lack of access to open green space (so-called “Nature Deficit Disorder”) and doctors are even prescribing walks in the countryside as part of a healing regime. In the built environment, such connections with nature can be re-built through the use of landscaping in and around buildings.

Our need for nature was identified by the American biologist, Edward O Wilson, who developed a hypothesis called Biophilia, which he defined as “the innate affiliation people seek with other organisms and the natural world.”  

Wilson’s research shows that, when given complete freedom to choose the characteristics of their ideal environment, people gravitate towards a location that combines three major features: positioned at height, overlooking the landscape (with open terrain and scattered trees), and being close to open water, such as streams or lakes. Effectively, what has been described is the landscape of our distant ancestors from the African plains, and that is the sort of landscape where we instinctively feel at home and safe: Humanity’s natural habitat. Other features frequently also included as key elements in the choice of an environment are refuge, use of natural and local materials, dynamic and diffuse daylight, visual connections between the interior and exterior and natural odours and scents.

Wilson’s ideas have been adopted by architects and designers for some time. In a book by Stephen Kellert, Biophilic Design, we see how architects have used the principles of biophilia to make their buildings more humane and connected with nature. However, there are easier ways than designing new buildings that can bring biophilic design into the workplace. By using combinations of plants, art, lighting and sound effects as well as a more naturalistic style of design it should be possible to make significant improvements to well-being and employee engagement at a very low cost.
Creating a healthy and nature-connected working environment can pay huge dividends in terms of well-being, productivity and business effectiveness – a real return on a relatively small investment in interior design.

Kenneth Freeman is the head of innovation at office landscaper Ambius

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