Vertical growth

Melissa Daniels and Anthony Caggiano re-invented their business when they recognized a growing market for green wall plants. Photo: Christopher Appoldt

In the throes of a recession, business partners Anthony Caggiano and Melissa Daniels knew they needed to diversify. As owners of Plant Connection Inc., they’d been brokering and growing nursery stock for the last decade. During that time, they provided green roof plants for several projects in New York City for local landscape firms. A serendipitous opportunity was presented in 2007 when Plant Connection Inc. (PCI) was hired to grow an 11,000-square-foot pre-grown green roof module for the New York Mets’ new Citi Field. It was the pair’s light bulb moment.

“Seeing an opportunity for an expanding market and significant interest in living architecture in the North American marketplace, PCI developed relationships with several green roof and green wall companies to help them with their plant sourcing and growing,” Daniels said.

And by 2009, the pair was part of growing the largest exterior living wall (at that time) in North America for PNC Financial Services Group in Pittsburgh, Pa. PNC was looking for innovative ways to make its new headquarters more energy efficient. The 10-story, 2,380-square-foot wall features a variety of regional plants grown into living art on the south-facing wall of One PNC Plaza at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Wood Street in downtown Pittsburgh. It is estimated that each of the 602 panels, with 24 plants in each 2-by-2 square foot space, will offset the carbon footprint of one person.

Caggiano and Daniels made a gradual shift away from traditional nursery stock and re-invented PCI into a green wall and roof nursery, installation and maintenance company.

Top: Sabrina Buttitta, PCI’s staff landscape architect, designed this wall at Standard Charter Bank in New York City. Bottom: Homeowners in Brooklyn, N.Y., wanted a green wall to be the focus of their landscape.

“We were working with green roof and green wall products, and the demand for them seemed to be increasing, so we started to shift our focus toward developing that business further,” Daniels said. “We used the money and time we used to dedicate to caring for the nursery stock to further develop our green wall and roof business. And as that continued to grow, we knew we were moving in the right direction and had made the right decision.”

Create and innovate
In 2011, PCI developed its own patent-pending living wall system based on the company’s years of horticultural experience and its dissatisfaction with other less successful green wall products on the market. PCI’s living wall product, G-O₂, has been installed in interior and exterior applications throughout the United States and Canada.

“We had worked with other green wall systems and seen problems with how they functioned,” Daniels said. “We are one of the only living wall companies with a horticultural background. Anthony has been a production container grower for more than 25 years. Most of the other companies are importers or fabricators/manufacturers.

“We took what we saw out in the marketplace and hybridized the best qualities of all the systems to come up with our own. We added our soil science, plant and growing experience knowledge to the design and came up with what we feel is the most successful and sustainable living wall system on the market today.”

The G-O₂ system allows living walls to be successful in cold climates, which is a challenging prospect, given its shallow soil profile – or no soil such as in hydroponic systems, Daniels said.

Most living wall systems are hydroponic, which means they use a constant flow of water through a geotextile type product like rock wool or coir to support the plant material. PCI uses a proprietary soilless media blend with special additives and components that help conserve water.

“Our living wall in Pittsburgh is only watered for 5 minutes per zone — it has 18 zones — two to three times a week at the height of the summer. We believe with our innovations, our G-O₂ system uses the least amount of water of any living wall system on the market today,” Daniels said.

PCI helped design, plant and install the living wall at PNC Financial Services in Baltimore. PCI also helped upgrade PNC’s green wall in Pittsburgh in May 2012, including PCI’s G-O2 system and its remote monitoring system.

PCI also developed a remote monitoring system to help with living wall maintenance. Sensors are placed in the living wall to monitor soil moisture, temperatures and salinity levels 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This information is transmitted in real time to central servers where the data is interpreted in PCI’s software platform. Maintenance companies can view the current condition of the wall at any time via the internet. Companies also receive alerts on their smart phones or by email when the soil is too dry or too moist, or if temperatures are approaching freezing.

“All maintenance activities are recorded in the software platform, giving us real-time information about how rates and frequency of fertilization, for example, are affecting the levels and health of the soil media in the wall,” Daniels said. “As the manufacturers, we oversee and monitor all the maintenance activities using the remote monitoring software to provide a second set of eyes to care for the wall.”

Bringing buildings to life
Known as living architecture, PCI markets its system to contractors, commercial clients interested in LEED certification, landscape architects, architects, restaurants, hospitals and banks.

Daniels and Caggiano are dedicated to promoting the benefits of living architecture.

“We feel it’s vital that we create a new paradigm where systems like ours can help bring nature back to cities and make it an integral part of our everyday lives, no matter where you live or how much space you have,” Daniels said. “Living walls and green roofs make it possible to have lots of plants where you could never grow them before. And with the reintroduction of plants comes the return of birds and butterflies and other wildlife otherwise displaced by city or suburban development.”
 

Green walls are relatively new to North America, and PCI markets the benefits of green spaces to all of its customers and potential clients.

“Thanks to some great advocacy work by leaders in the field, we’ve got studies to prove that our living walls and green roofs have quantifiable environmental and economic benefits. That has really helped the industry grow in the past few years,” she said. “Green roofs can significantly reduce and clean pollutants out of stormwater runoff. And both green roofs and walls clean the air, reduce smog and reduce high temperatures in cities caused by too much concrete and asphalt. They also protect building surfaces and make the roofs and walls they protect last two to three times longer than normal. They can be used to grow food or shade, and cool an overheated area.”

Several studies point to other benefits related to human healing, worker morale and student attention.

“We are doing something that can really make a difference in people’s lives. There are studies that show that healing time and recovery is sped up when patients are exposed to nature. We have done several green roof and living wall projects in hospitals, oncology centers and recovery centers, and it is very rewarding to know you are bringing joy and hope to someone’s life at such a difficult time,” Daniels said. “Other studies show that students in school with ADHD can focus more after spending time interacting with nature. And office buildings with interior plants often have better morale and lower turnover and absenteeism rates than those without them. Being around plants makes people feel better. And we have an ingenious way to bring them anywhere we want to, which is just a remarkable gift to give the world.”

Full-spectrum of service
PCI supports clients through all stages of development of the living wall project, including initial design, plant selection, soil specification, manufacturing, growing, installation and finally, maintenance training and support.

PCI relies heavily on social media for its marketing efforts. The company has two active Facebook pages (Plant Connection Inc. and Gro2GroWalls and GroRoofs) and a Twitter account (@Gro2USA) that reach consumers and professionals. Caggiano and Daniels are members of Greenbuild, The United States Green Building Council and the Green Business Committee of the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce, where they’re able to market living architecture to building owners or other decision makers. PCI offers seminars to architects and landscape architects to help bolster their knowledge of green walls and roofs. The business partners are also active on Green Walls Committee for Green Roofs for Healthy Cities.

Left: Green walls are also suited for home installation, such as this private residence in Southampton, N.Y. Right: PCI installed a green wall at the Buddhist Meditation Center in Sag Harbor, N.Y.

For more: www.myplantconnection.com