Buses, book-bags, bells and slamming lockers -- the sights and sounds of school will soon be in full swing across the country. Along with the expected sounds and sights of academic life, enlightened educators are now including indoor plants into the educational environment to enhance academic success. A new study undertaken by the Royal Agricultural College, in concert with Initial Tropical Plants, www.initialplants.com, the largest provider of interior landscaping, design installation and maintenance services in the world, reveals that students can improve their chances of academic accomplishment with a little help from an unlikely source, plants.

Amanda Read, a student at the Royal Agricultural College in Cirencester, England, studied the attendance and behavior of a group of 34 students over the course of an academic year during a weekly series of lectures. The location of the lectures alternated each week between a room with plants and a room without plants. The audience was video recorded and observed for behavioral signs of inattention including daydreaming, talking, fidgeting and yawning. Each incident was recorded and the total number of incidents per lecture calculated. In the room where plants were present, student’s inattentiveness was reduced by 70 percent. Following a lecture break, 97.8 percent of students returned to the plant-filled lecture room while only 86.4 percent returned to the flora-free space.

“It’s important for the academic community to realize the value of indoor plants extends far beyond mere aesthetic appeal,” said Jeff Mariola, president, Initial Tropical Plants. “Interior plants decrease stress levels while raising productivity levels and provide the academic environment with a wide variety of cost-cutting and health boosting benefits.”

The student researcher didn’t anticipate the “undergrowth” of support generated by plant power. “I really did not expect to see such a significant difference in respect to student behavior,” said Amanda Read. “Being a plant lover, I expected to learn that students preferred the room with plants. However, while I anticipated positive comments from the students in the plant-filled rooms, I didn’t anticipate such a marked difference in respect to student behavior.”

Initial Tropical Plants is the largest provider of interior landscaping, design installation and maintenance services in the world. Initial Tropical Plants has achieved their leadership position through the diverse and refined skills of their highly trained people. Initial Tropical Plants is a subsidiary of Rentokil Initial plc, a publicly traded international business-to-business service organization based in the UK with over 90,000 employees worldwide. For more information, visit Initial Tropical Plants websites at: www.initialplants.com and www.plants-in-buildings.com