Australian Retirement Trust

Australian Retirement Trust’s Brisbane headquarters came out of a 2022 merger, and the fitout had to read as one organisation rather than two. We planted 2,700 plants across fourteen floors, including a Yarning Circle planted entirely with Australian natives.

The client

When two large funds merged in 2022 they needed a single CBD headquarters that felt like one organisation rather than two, and the architect on the project ran a tender for the interior plantscape. We won it that June, on a five-year contract. Our own Brisbane base sits about five kilometres away, which matters more than it sounds on a building this size, because a plant that needs replacing can be replaced the same week rather than the next month.

The brief

The brief asked for a mixed, vibrant planting scheme running through custom joinery across fourteen floors, for more than 2,300 staff, with an emphasis on large-leafed species. The hero floor is a Yarning Circle, planted with more than 200 Australian natives.

The Yarning Circle

The Yarning Circle itself belongs to the client, both the space and the thinking behind it. Our part of the work was the harder horticultural question underneath it: what would actually grow there.

Australian natives are not bred for interiors, and most of what is sold as an indoor plant is tropical for good reason. We trialled several native species over about six months, indoors, to see which would hold condition before any of them went into the finished space. Agathis robusta came through, along with dragon tail (Epipremnum pinnatum), native violet, tree fern, bird’s nest fern, crocodile fern, kentia palm, native ginger, silver fern, elephant ear and bangalow palm.

We have not seen another interior installation in Queensland that uses Australian natives at this scale.

The other thirteen floors

Elsewhere the approach is quieter but no less deliberate. Each floor carries five common indoor species and two statement plants, varied from floor to floor so that no two read identically while the building still holds together as one scheme.

That was helped by the building itself. Floor-to-ceiling glazing gives enough natural light that no supplementary lighting was needed anywhere in the fitout, which is unusual at this size and saved the client a running cost they never had to think about.

The pots are a matte concrete finish, chosen against the timber in the interior. Pine bark mulch throughout: light, natural-looking, and easy to lift when a plant is changed over.

Maintenance

The site is serviced weekly. That covers polishing foliage and pots, checking moisture levels, pruning, inspecting for disease, fertilising, and swapping out any plant that has started to go backwards. Changing a plant before anyone notices it is struggling is most of the job, and on a floor plate this visible it is the whole point.