We are pleased to announce that our Chair, Kenneth Freeman is involved with a new research project looking at the potential of active green walls and their ability to improve environmental quality in classrooms which is offering a great opportunity for an enthusiastic student with a 2.1 or higher BSc or MSc degree.

Kenneth Freeman, Chair of plants@work

The research project is funded by the RHS (Royal Horticultural Society) at the University of Birmingham and 'will pursue a multi-scale approach to establish the potential of active green walls to improve environmental quality in classrooms. Building on our recent work on indoor air quality (IAQ) impacts of single potted plants (Gubb et al., 2018-2022) and people’s preferences for plant shape/form and its impact on perceived wellbeing (Berger et al., 2022), we plan to establish the key performance parameters of more effective, active green walls.'

'Choices of plant combinations and design of the active green wall will also benefit from the industrial co-supervisor with extensive experience in award-winning green wall design, maintenance and application in the built environment.'

The research will involve schools that already participate in the RHS Campaign for School Gardening. The research team will work with one partner school from the RHS links.'This will allow us to move from model lab-based assessment to deployment of newly-developed, energy efficient, active green wall solutions. This will be integrated in the school curriculum (linked to teaching within KS4 Biology/Science and Geography) to ensure student and teacher engagement, co-design and optimisation of the green wall system based on the feedback from the students.'

Richard Sabin of Biotecture (a Mitie company), both plants@work members, will also work on this project.

You can read more about this project here.