How Healthcare Facilities Use Planters to Create Calming Outdoor Spaces
Working in the healthcare industry requires a certain personality to offer exceptional comfort to all patients, whether working in a hospital, private practice, or corporate setting. No matter what you do in healthcare, it takes compassion and commitment to provide exceptional care.
While healthcare is demanding and requires patience and compassion, it takes a mental toll on many doctors, nurses, medical assistants, and supporting staff. Healthcare workers often work long hours, fill in for shifts, and work overtime while caring for patients with a wide range of healthcare needs, from routine checkups to emergency care. Likewise, patients face life-changing news and diagnoses while visiting healthcare facilities or while healing.
Healthcare facilities are often inviting, with calming environments to help ease employees’ and patients’ minds. Continue reading to learn how healthcare facilities use planters to create calming outdoor spaces.
Why Calming Outdoor Spaces Matter in Healthcare Facilities
Visiting healthcare facilities is often associated with anxiety and nervousness, especially for patients and visitors, while employees may feel overwhelmed or stressed. Sometimes it’s nice to step outside of a room and into a healing garden to process and regroup. Calming outdoor environments can create a more welcoming, comforting atmosphere for patients, visitors, and healthcare workers.
A connection to nature can make a meaningful difference in the way people experience a healthcare environment. According to a study by the National Center for Biotechnology Information and the National Library of Medicine, exposure to natural surroundings is associated with benefits such as improved mental health, cognitive function, physical activity, sleep, and blood pressure. For patients, visitors, and healthcare workers spending long periods indoors, access to a thoughtfully designed outdoor area can provide a welcome change of scenery and a place to pause, relax, or reflect.
How Commercial Planters Support Calming Outdoor Spaces
Commercial planters are designed to keep plants, shrubs, and flowers on your commercial property thriving, whether in a healing garden or terrace. Below are some ways commercial planters support healing gardens:
They Add Greenery Where Traditional Landscaping Isn’t Practical
Healthcare facilities don’t allow for much in-ground planting, often limiting in-ground landscaping to entrances and surrounding areas. Incorporating commercial planters allows healthcare facilities to add greenery where traditional landscaping isn’t practical. Areas like courtyards, patios, rooftops, and walkways can display beautiful, comforting flowers and greenery where they otherwise wouldn’t be able to.
They Create Defined Spaces for Relaxation/Reflection
Hospitals and other healthcare facilities often have multiple areas, like patient rooms, cafeterias, and waiting rooms. Adding planters to a courtyard or healing garden creates defined spaces for relaxation/reflection, ensuring these areas are somewhat separate from the regular hustle and bustle of the healthcare facility.
They Provide Privacy and Visual Separation
Adding planters to your healthcare facility can help create defined spaces for relaxation/relfection, separating vacant corners or courtyards and deterring normal foot traffic to provide some privacy for those who need it. You can use planters as decorative barriers to define certain spaces where patients, employees, and visitors can relax.
They Make Outdoor Spaces More Welcoming
Planters can also be used around entrances, waiting areas, and courtyards to make healthcare facilities feel less institutional and more inviting. Incorporating beautiful commercial planters with lush plants creates a warmer first impression for patients, staff, and visitors.
Commercial planters support healing gardens and add comfort to any healthcare facility. However, not all commercial planters support healing gardens the way that PolyMade planters do.
Choosing the Right Commercial Planters for Healthcare Facilities
PolyMade’s commercial planters offer exceptional performance compared to traditional metal, concrete, and fiberglass options, helping create the ideal conditions for healthy plant growth. Designed with aesthetics, durability, and functionality in mind, our custom planters are built to support plants as they thrive. Each planter is customized to meet the unique requirements of every project and engineered to withstand demanding outdoor environments. Offering a refined alternative to traditional concrete planters, PolyMade delivers lasting performance while maintaining the desired design and promoting the overall health of plants.
For healthcare facility owners and managers, creating comfortable outdoor spaces requires materials that can perform reliably in demanding conditions. PolyMade’s commercial planters are engineered to withstand temperature changes, severe weather, and repeated freeze-thaw cycles while helping create a healthier environment for plants. Our specialized three-layer construction combines a lightweight, high-density polystyrene core for structural strength and thermal insulation with a polyurethane layer that adds impact resistance and durability. Custom exterior coatings provide an additional layer of protection against UV exposure and weather-related wear.
This construction offers an important advantage for healthcare facilities: healthier plants that can thrive throughout changing seasons. Unlike traditional metal or concrete planters, which can expose plant roots to significant temperature fluctuations, PolyMade’s insulated design helps provide a more stable environment for root systems.
Healthier, longer-lasting greenery can contribute to welcoming outdoor spaces where patients and their families can step away from the clinical setting, enjoy nature, and find a sense of comfort. Purposefully designing a comforting healing garden can comfort patients, staff, and visitors when they need it most.
Let’s Build Your Custom Commercial Planter Today
PolyMade’s custom commercial planters combine durability, lightweight construction, insulation, moisture management, and customization to create a planter solution that works season after season, making them a perfect addition to any healthcare facility.
From commercial outdoor planters and commercial planter boxes to large architectural installations, PolyMade can build a solution around your exact specifications. Ready to create a commercial planter designed for your property? Learn more about PolyMade’s custom planter process and start building a planter that looks great from summer through fall—and every season after. Start your project today!
