In our current landscape, businesses are looking for solutions to create a safe and healthy environment for either dining, working, or in-person collaboration with coworkers and clients. To transform or build-out space successfully, we need to consider the brand’s design style, understand what the workflows are, set a budget with room for unknowns, and think through the need for versatility.

Many industries are reassessing how they are utilizing the space they have to use to do business. For example, restaurant owners are having to rethink how their patrons are dining and enjoying their food. Nick Kokonas, co-owner of The Alinea Group, projected that moving forward there might be a team of cooks that will relocate to private dining rooms or be something similar to The Aviary. The Aviary is a restaurant with a smaller clientele but offers the experience of a 7-course meal complete with already paired drinks.

In our neck of the woods, in Washington state, officials are figuring out a way to expand the footprint of current businesses. For example, city officials are looking at ways restaurants cater to diners more safely. This is called the Safe Start plan, which increases outdoor capacity by allowing businesses to apply for special events permits quickly.

Large corporations have spent large sums of money to create campuses for their employees, but now people would rather not travel close to others in the subway or buses and prefer to have what is termed the “third office.” Third office spaces are neither at home or headquarters, but shared space closer to home.

Working from home has its challenges, and commuting via mass-transit does too. So the best solution may be the third office where people can live close to where they are working but still capitalize on the energy and comfortable work environment of a coworking space.

Whether it is a small niche restaurant or a “third office” space, it is important to think through how to divide spaces. One great option to divide spaces without adding permanent walls is to use commercial planters, like the rectangular planters in PureModern’s collection.

In this article, we explore ways that commercial planter dividers can help divide spaces such as screening out unwanted views, create social distancing boundaries, and turn underutilized spaces into functional areas.

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Why Use Planter Dividers In A Commercial Setting?

Create a Privacy Screen

Metal growing platforms. This creates a spot for climbing plants to grab hold of and eventually create a green privacy screen.
Order a row of rectangular planters. Plant bushes, such as a boxwood spaced to specifically grow a green hedge.
Softer boundary. Privacy screens do not need to be a solid wall of green. A softer boundary can make more of a peek-a-boo view with a bush such as the Sky Pencil Holly.
Go faux. Sometimes there is not enough of a maintenance budget to have live plants, so then go faux. There are many faux plant options that create a satisfying division without the upkeep.

Enforce Social Distancing

Restaurants are spreading their tables out to ensure at least a 6ft of space between diners, and retail businesses are creating suitable spacing for purchasing items. To do this more effectively and discreetly, add planter divider walls. These planters are not permanent, so if and when we are spacing our tables closer, the planters can be put against bare walls and then absorb sound in a noisy restaurant.

Add outdoor planter dividers to create a noticeable boundary between a sidewalk passersby and clients enjoying lunch. These planter dividers are also multifunctioning and can be relocated to a different spot once the need for a larger footprint is no longer needed.

Add an Artistic Flair

Fortunately, the beauty of commercial planter dividers is that any color that matches your business’s branding can be used. We can customize the color of any aluminum and most fiberglass planters with a RAL color number or a color code from most paint manufacturers. Planter dividers can add a pop of color in an otherwise monotone environment, especially when the right plant is planted to complement.

Modern Design Element That Doesn’t Distract

Commercial planters have the added benefit of not taking up a lot of visual space, so they are great to use to divide spaces in a large room because plants seem like part of the room's landscape. This means, you won’t be faced with the dark and cramped quarters caused by dividers like cubicles, big furniture, or screens. Rectangular planters work great because they create bases for furniture to be lined up against, and make it easy to define a specific traffic area.

Cubicle Planters Play Double-Duty

Cubicle planter room dividers work to divide workspaces and improve the health of office employees. As mentioned above, they divide space without making the office seem cluttered, which can often happen with solid dividers.

Alternatively, small cubicle planters can be purchased to separate workspaces in an open office concept. The planters can be placed on desks between computer monitors to give employees the benefit of increased privacy and higher serotonin levels.

Convenient Commercial Planters Let You Redo Your Space

If you have a variety of rectangular planters in your area defining smaller spaces, it’s easy to redo your large room at the drop of a hat. You just have to move the planters around to a new formation.

Instead of disassembling cubicles or finding new ways to arrange hulking furniture pieces, you can simply move a planter to a new spot, and begin designing your new space around it. For convenience, castors can be installed on most planters to make it easier to move the planters around when the configuration of the room needs to be changed.

Turn Outdoor Space Useful with Commercial Planters

Many businesses don’t know the best way to utilize outdoor space at their location. A large courtyard with a few tables in one spot becomes mostly unused space.

Make your customers, clients, partners, or guests comfortable by creating small sitting areas and conversation nooks outside. Commercial planters can be used to define these spaces and add a buffer of privacy between one space and the next.

Types of Planter Dividers

Commercial planter dividers are made of contract-grade materials to withstand high-traffic areas as well as temperature fluctuations and weather. They are made from fiberglass, aluminum, or COR-TEN. A plant room divider is offered in many shapes such as round, square, or rectangular.

Indoor planter dividers can be manufactured without drainage holes to ensure that water only waters your plants and does not damage floors.

Outdoor planter dividers can be retrofitted to be ready for irrigation tubing, drainage holes, and even be bottomless to utilize the existing available soil.

Continuous plant dividers can be made using our Connect Modular Planter System. When an open trough planting area is specified, there are four options to create a long green wall. Read more about the Connect Modular Planter System.

How Planters Are Used As Dividers

Restaurant extends the seating area

Glass & Vine in Miami, FL is located on the beautiful Biscayne Bay. They extended seating onto a lower patio using the Modern Elite Aluminum Planters in matte black. This restaurant is touted as a dining spot where you won’t melt from the heat and where your furry friend can join you for lunch after a walk in the adjoining Grove’s Peacock Park.

County government has safe employee collaboration meeting areas

Offices for the Monterey County Government are complete with planters and faux plants. There are spaces for collaboration and alternate seating areas for when you need a break from the desk.

Business with coworking spaces

Kivvit has created a division between the cubical working spaces, the break room, and the seating area. This creates clear division without the need for a walled floor to ceiling build-out

Multi-living non-functional area to functional

Towers at Emeryville decked out an outdoor space with multiple seating areas, a bocce ball court, tables, and even shade.

Raceway creates a division between a high foot traffic area and a dining space

Laurel Park Raceway utilized rectangular planter dividers to separate the general foot traffic area from the dining area.

Inspiration for Commercial Planter Dividers

Landmark Atlantic Plumbing Cinema - Washington, DC

Businesses are rethinking their strategy to continue to be nimble in a changing environment. According to Professors Bettina Buchel and Jean-Louis Barsoux, the three V’s: Vigilance, Versatility, and Velocity are important.

The need to change the configuration of tables or desks might be a change that is needed to keep doing business by either extending your business footprint by getting a permit, separating tables further away, or by creating a bigger waiting area in your office.

If you are changing your space configuration, PureModern is here to help with brainstorming ways to keep doing business as required. To learn more about adding planter dividers to your space call us at 1-866-695-7651.