Ways of Greening: Using Plants and Gardens for Healthy Work and Living Surroundings

This book focuses on rethinking working and living spaces and understanding how ＂greening＂ can make them healthier and their occupants happier. It teaches how to see unique ideas for spaces and some of the materials needed to create the designs.

Inspired by a study that states that 8% of a space needs to have plants in order to positively affect the air quality of the space, this book explores what that minimum would look like in spaces and how it can be done to existing spaces as well as to new site designs, greening both interiors and exteriors. Using the mathematical amount of 10% per square foot, the illustrations start at that quantity of greening and show how it can look.

The sites selected are both public and private sites, as well as interior and exterior. As there are more modalities, needs, and locations where people now work, making sure that multiple types of spaces are designed for people’s success is more relevant than ever. This includes designs for more traditional offices, open-air offices, commercial spaces, homes, studios, and more.

Ways of Greening: using Plans and Gardens for Healthy Work and Living Surroundings gives readers a way to not only understand greening but to understand how to see greening applied to their place. The two basic ways to see the spaces selected are existing spaces to which greening design is applied afterward and upcoming spaces in which greening design can be built directly into the space. The first type of retrofitting greening into existing spaces can also be combined with the second type of space (new designs). There are examples of both types throughout the book. Essentially, this book addresses ways in which business owners, residents, developers, architects, agencies, and others can integrate greening to improve the air quality and the quality of life with a green solution.

Stevie Famulari, Gds is an artist, author, researcher, green design specialist, founder, and principal of Engaging Green and tenured professor of Landscape and Urban Design at Farmingdale State College, SUNY, in the Department of Urban Horticulture and Design. She is a keynote speaker, has received numerous awards, and has shared information to help numerous people experience greening in new and unique ways.

Her recent installation Engaging Urban Greening was installed at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC. Over 1,400 seeded paper pieces (colorful papers embedded with a wildflower seed mix) were given to the public during the installation. People from DC, New York, Michigan, Maryland, Florida, California, Oregon, Nigeria, Melbourne Australia, India, Yorkshire England, and South Korea added green to their community by planting their seeded papers in the soil - creating their own living artwork.

Mx. Famulari’s designs and design research explore the relationship, extension, and application of green designs to other diverse fields to create healthy spaces for living and working. Time, change, and engagement in the process are some of the continuing themes in her works. Defying traditions as well as celebrating ecological processes, and using community and individual stories of sites are themes she is widely recognized for. With the applied art of green design combined with the science of phytoremediation, her works have aesthetic beauty as well as healing properties for both people and the environment.

Her work in greening designs, research, and education can be seen nationally and internationally and includes green walls; planted roofs; green remediation designs for interior and exterior applications; designs for the Environmental Protection Agency in Colorado; Ghost Ranch Visitor Center for the Georgia O’Keefe Museum in Abiquiu, New Mexico; development of green design and policies on the UNM campus; and flood control design for the Red River in North Dakota. Lectures, presentations, and exhibitions of her work have been held at Harvard University, Plains Art Museum, San Diego Museum of Natural History, UC Berkeley, MECA, UMN, NDSU, ASLA, and AIA.

Stevie Famulari’s phytoremediation database of hundreds of plants which clean the air, soil, and water of contaminants is used by the EPA, courses at Harvard Graduate School of Design, the International Phytoremediation Society, landscape architecture and engineering firms, and government agencies. She has been an investigator for grants which explore water remediation design for oil drilling and fracking processes, improvements of air quality, remediation design for communities, and interior greening applications. Her designs and design research explore the relationship, extension, and application of green designs to other diverse fields. Stevie’s Ph.D., ABD research is at RMIT. She received her Mistress’ Degree in Landscape Architecture (MLA) from the College of Environmental Science and Forestry, SUNY, with a concentration in Fine Arts from Syracuse University. Her Bachelor of Fine Arts is from NYU.

Stevie Famulari’s work has appeared in hundreds of books, magazines, newspapers, and television programs, including Smithsonian Magazine, Food Network Challenges, and Specials, Oakland Tribune, World Entertainment News Network, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Travel Channel, Good Morning America, CBS Early Morning News, Washington Post, the Post Standard, Trust for Public Land, Boston Herald, Berkeley Daily Planet, Santa Fe Reporter, and Star Tribune.