Teneriffe Dental

Teneriffe Dental wanted its waiting room to feel like somewhere you would not mind sitting. The room is small, bright and west-facing, which ruled out the species we had chosen for it. We changed the planting before the light could do any damage, and used the pots to do a second job the practice needed.

The client

Teneriffe Dental is a single practice in Teneriffe, a few minutes from the Brisbane CBD. The interior is deliberately unclinical—white tile, tan leather, bold line-drawn portraits on the walls—and the brief for the planting followed from that. A dental waiting room is a place people sit in while feeling slightly tense. Everything in it is doing some work on that feeling, whether or not anyone notices.

The brief

Warm and welcoming, in a room with very little floor to give up. The practice also wanted some separation between the waiting area and the surgery rooms beyond it, without building anything or closing the space in. We were consulted at the start of November 2022 and installed ten days later, working outside opening hours so the team arrived the next morning to a finished room.

The light

We had specified spathiphyllum sensation for the room, chosen for the look of it. Walking the space made it clear that would not hold: the windows face west, and a Brisbane afternoon through untinted glass is harsher than most interiors ever get. Spathiphyllum scorches in that. We changed the specification to green philodendron, which takes direct sun without marking, and brought in ficus lyrata for height where the light is strongest.

It is a small decision, and an unglamorous one. It is also the difference between a room that looks lovely in November and one that looks burnt by February.

The pots

Matte white designer pots, chosen to sit with the tile and the white joinery rather than stand against it. The taller troughs were placed to mark the line between the waiting area and the surgery rooms, so the planting does the work a screen or a partition would have done, in a room with no space for either. Charcoal pebbles finish the surface, so the planting reads as part of the room rather than as pots that happen to be standing in it.

Maintenance

Every plant was treated with white oil and eco oil before it came through the door. A pest problem appearing in a waiting room a fortnight after an installation is nobody’s idea of a good start, and the time to deal with that is before anything is delivered.

We have serviced the site fortnightly since 2022. Watering is the awkward part, as it often is in inner-city tenancies: the only sink on site is too shallow to fit a watering can under the tap. Our technician fills a cup and tips it in, several times over, every visit. It is a slightly ridiculous solution and it has worked for four years.

That constraint shaped the planting as much as the light did. Species here have to tolerate being watered by hand, to what they can take, rather than on a schedule.

The size of the job

Teneriffe Dental

This is one room. It took a morning to install and it is a fortnightly visit to look after. The thinking is the same as on a site a hundred times its size: look at the light, be willing to throw out your own specification, and make the pots earn their place. A small site gets the same technician, the same visit and the same attention as a large one, and this one has had four years of it.

Teneriffe Dental features the room in its own marketing, and the Interior Plantscape Association gave it the award for small installation in 2023. Of the two, the first means more.