The Brief
Shopify's Toronto team had a clear vision: 11 floors of office space that feel like somewhere people genuinely want to be. Plants were central to that vision — but they needed a partner who could execute at scale, maintain consistency across hundreds of individual specimens on every level, and require nothing from the internal team.
That's a different problem than designing a single floor. At 11 floors, the challenge is systemic: how do you keep every plant healthy, every zone visually consistent, and every maintenance visit invisible to the people working there?
Design at Floor Level
Our designers spent a full day walking every level before drafting a single specification. The office's large south-facing windows and high ceilings opened up the range of species we could work with — a luxury compared to many Toronto builds.
We approached each floor as its own zone while maintaining a coherent design language throughout. The social lounge became the centrepiece: three 2-metre Ficus lyrata specimens anchored the space, flanked by bird-of-paradise plants in oversized matte vessels. Plants as design elements, not afterthoughts.
Desk zones across all 11 floors required a different approach — trailing pothos in hanging ceramic planters and compact snake plant arrangements on shelving. Maximum presence, minimum footprint.
Maintenance at Scale
Maintaining 11 floors of plants bi-weekly is a logistics operation as much as a horticulture one. Our team visits on a fixed schedule built around Shopify's office hours — every visit covers watering, fertilizing, pest monitoring, leaf cleaning, and a health check on every specimen across every level.
Across the full program — hundreds of plants, 11 floors, multiple years — we have not lost a single specimen to neglect. That record is what we're most proud of on this project.
This program set the standard for what a large-scale tech-sector plant program can look like when design, installation, and maintenance are handled by the same team.