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Steve Pike

Steve.Pike@gsky.com

561-932-4070

GSKY ADDS ITS SECOND WEST ELM STORE TO DESIGN PORTFOLIO

VANCOUVER, B.C. , Nov. 22, 2011 – GSky Plant Systems, Inc. has installed a 242 square-foot Versa Wall at the newly-opened West Elm home furnishings store in Los Angeles. Located at 8366 Beverly Blvd. near Beverly Hills, the Versa Wall is the second collaboration between GSky and West Elm, the trendy, green friendly, home furnishings store owned by Williams-Sonoma. The first GSky Vera Wall was installed earlier this year at the West Elm store in Seattle, WA.

The Versa Wall at the West Elm Los Angeles store, designed by GSky Design Manager Deborah Kotalic, features 1,365 plants. The plants are: Philodendron Cordatum, Golden Pothos, Rabbits Foot Fern, Neon Pothos, Calathea  and Nephthytis “White Butterfly.”

The Versa Wall is prominently placed on the right side of the West Elm store. It replaced what was known as the store’s feature wall.  It can be seen from the entry and leads customers to one of the stairs up to the mezzanine level.

The West Elm brand uses global materials for their merchandise and a number of items are 100 percent green.  The Versa Wall ties into the store design with the reclaimed wood floors, wood fixtures, blackened steel, seeded glass, open wood truss ceiling, and skylights.

“GSky is honored to continue working with West Elm and Williams-Sonoma,” said GSky Plant Systems, Inc. President Chad Sichello. “The Versa Wall at the West Elm Los Angeles store is a great example of how a green wall adds to the ambience and eye appeal of a store or office.”

ABOUT GSKY

GSky Plant Systems, Inc. is the leading provider of indoor and outdoor vertical living garden systems in North America. Products include the Pro Wall System, Basic Wall System,  and Versa Wall System.  Services include green wall consulting, maintenance and remote monitoring of installed walls.  GSky walls can be seen at Microsoft headquarters, Walt Disney World, Starwood Hotels, the Vancouver Airport, Duke University, Longwood Gardens in Philadelphia and The Bertschi School in Seattle, WA.  Visit gsky.com for more information and like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/gsky.

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Steve Pike

Steve.Pike@gsky.com

561-932-4070

GSKY PRESIDENT CHAD SICHELLO ADDRESSES LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS IN SAN DIEGO

VANCOUVER, B.C. ,  Nov. 3, 2011 – The green wall market in North America is in a fluid phase moving towards a transitional phase where a dominant green wall technology will emerge and the field of competitors will quit expanding and begin to contract.

That was the message GSky Plant Systems, Inc., President Chad Sichello told an audience at the American Society of Landscape Architects Expo this week in San Diego. On a panel of green wall experts that also included GSky Design Manager Debbie Kotalic, Sichello said the number of green wall technologies is rapidly expanding.

“New competitors are entering and exiting the field, so it is important for landscape architects to choose their green wall solutions based upon: Installation history and success rate; viability of the green wall company; and warranty and maintenance program detail,” Sichello said.

The GSky booth was one of the more popular at the ASLA Expo as landscape architects from around the world learned more about the technologies and designs in GSky’s Pro, Versa and Basic Walls as well as its Smart Wall cabinets.

“The reaction to our walls was overwhelming,” Sichello said. “It’s a tribute to what we at GSky have accomplished and to what the future will be for us and for green walls.”

ABOUT GSKY

GSky Plant Systems, Inc. is the leading provider of indoor and outdoor vertical living garden systems in North America. Products include the Pro Wall System, Basic Wall System,  Versa Wall System  and Smart Wall cabinets.  Services include green wall consulting, maintenance and remote monitoring of installed walls.  GSky walls can be seen at Microsoft headquarters, Walt Disney World, Starwood Hotels, the Vancouver Airport, Duke University, Longwood Gardens in Philadelphia, Trader Vic’s Restaurant in Portland, and The Bertschi School in Seattle, WA.  Visit gsky.com for more information and like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/gsky.

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Steve Pike

Steve.Pike@gsky.com

561-932-4070

GSKY EXECUTIVES ON EXPERT PANEL TO DISCUSS GREEN WALLS AT ASLA EXPO

VANCOUVER, B.C. , Oct. 28, 2011– Gsky Plant Systems, Inc. President Chad Sichello (see attached photo) and Design and Plants Manager Deborah Kotalic will be among the featured presenters  at the American Society of Landscape Architects Expo, Oct. 30-Nov. 2 at the San Diego Convention Center. More than 6,000 landscape architecture professionals from across the U.S. and around the world are expected to attend the Expo.

Sichello and Kotalic will present GSky’s green wall success and vision during a panel discussion entitled, “The Truth About Green Walls: The Green Wall Specialists Speak Out.” The panel discussion and presentation will be held Nov. 1 from 1:30 p.m. to 3 p.m.

“This is a great honor and a great opportunity for GSky to get in front of the most influential people in the landscape design industry,”  Sichello said. “Green walls are becoming more and more a staple of landscape design. It’s important that landscape design architects know how to successfully create a green wall and how green walls are designed and maintained.”

GSky also will be an exhibitor at the Expo (Booth #1740), showing off its Pro Wall and Versa Wall systems as well as its Smart Wall cabinets

ABOUT GSKY

GSky Plant Systems, Inc. is the leading provider of indoor and outdoor vertical living garden systems in North America. Products include the Pro Wall System, Basic Wall System,  Versa Wall System  and Smart Wall cabinets.  Services include green wall consulting, maintenance and remote monitoring of installed walls.  GSky walls can be seen at Microsoft headquarters, Walt Disney World, Starwood Hotels, the Vancouver Airport, Duke University, Longwood Gardens in Philadelphia, Trader Vic’s Restaurant in Portland, and The Bertschi School in Seattle, WA.  Visit gsky.com for more information and like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/gsky.

Green Wall vision featured throughout videoThe Microsoft Envisioning Lab was developed by the Office Labs group at Microsoft. The purpose of the project is to demonstrate the next generation technologies that Microsoft is working on and then to have people interact with these technologies first hand. The Green Wall lies at the end of the walk-through demonstration of various technologies. There are tables and chairs that are occasionally swamped out with a conference table and chairs, where the participants of the demonstration can then sit and discuss their experience in front of a Green Wall, which Microsoft believes will be a technology that will play a much larger role in our lives in the near future.

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Steve Pike

Steve.Pike@gsky.com

561-932-4070

GSKY’S VERSA WALL IN NEW WEST ELM HOME FURNISHINGS STORE IN SEATTLE

VANCOUVER, B.C. , Oct. 20, 2011 – GSky’s newest Green Wall is on display at the West Elm home furnishings store on West Lake Ave. in Seattle. The trendy store is part of the Williams-Sonoma portfolio and features many products that are 100 percent green.

GSky’s Versa Wall at West Elm, approximately 12 feet tall and 16 feet wide, reflects the brand’s modern design style and provides customers with a pleasant, soothing shopping experience.  GSky designer Debbie Kotalic worked with designers from West Elm to develop the Versa Wall’s plant design layout, which is located directly behind the checkout counters and centered to be visible throughout the store.

The Versa Wall features 1,140 plants, including Philodendron Cordatum, Golden Pothos, Rabbits Foot Fern, Neon Pothos, Zebrina Pendula, N-Joy Pothos, Baby’s Tears Pilea.

“This was a terrific project for GSky and were honored to work with a such a renowned company as Williams-Sonoma,” said GSky Plants Systems, Inc.  President Chad Sichello. “It’s really win-win for everybody. Williams-Sonoma and West Elm get a beautiful green wall in the store and GSky gets to show off another one of our Versa Walls.”

Developed in response to the increased demand for Green Walls in offices, GSky’s Versa Wall System is a “customizable, low maintenance, Green Wall system” ideal for those who want versatile plant designs in their indoor office environment.

The Versa Wall design specifically caters to the needs of the interior plant maintenance industry.  Its design employs standard practices used by interior plant maintenance companies so that plants can be easily maintained, refreshed and replaced as required with very little effort.   For example, the Versa Wall plants can be easily changed out for seasonal updates to the wall, such as putting in Poinsettas for the Winter holiday season, or herbs can be put in the wall and refreshed on a weekly basis for a restaurant.

Furthermore, the watering system has been greatly simplified on the wall.  Plants are irrigated by a trickle-down watering system that can be installed using a hidden water tank and pump so that the system does not require changes to interior plumbing lines.

 “We have received great interest so far for the Versa Wall because it’s been engineered specifically for the interior environment and offers the same great plant design flexibility as our Pro Wall product, but with much improved maintenance practices for the interior environment,“ Sichello said
 

ABOUT GSKY

GSky Plant Systems, Inc. is the leading provider of indoor and outdoor vertical living garden systems in North America. Products include the Pro Wall System, Basic Wall System,  and Versa Wall System.  Services include green wall consulting, maintenance and remote monitoring of installed walls.  GSky walls can be seen at Microsoft headquarters, Walt Disney World, Starwood Hotels, the Vancouver Airport, Duke University, Longwood Gardens in Philadelphia and The Bertschi School in Seattle, WA.  Visit gsky.com for more information and like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/gsky.

Recession forced pruning of green walls

But GSky Plant Systems is flourishing again

By Cheryl Chan, Vancouver Province; Postmedia News October 19, 2011

Business is blossoming for Chad Sichello, president and sales manager of GSky.

Chad Sichello is busy settling into GSky Plant Systems’ new digs on the sixth floor of a building at the edge of Vancouver’s Gastown neighbourhood.

The light-filled space fits the company’s trendy location: white walls, pale floors, minimalist interiors.

There’s no art, but the space doesn’t need any. In the middle of the room a double-sided wall of plants bursts with China dolls, ficus Benjaminas, mums and other foliage and instantly draws the eye.

“Everybody is making a very concerted effort to live a greener life,” the GSky president says, explaining the popularity of green walls, a growing trend in urban architecture, landscaping and design.

“People get excited about them. They look at it as a piece of art,” he says.

The living wall in his Vancouver condo is a favourite drawing subject of his three-year-old son, he adds.

A boyish-looking 35, Sichello grew up on a farm in Saskatchewan. He worked as a software engineer in the U.S. before operating a green-roof subcontracting business in Japan.

Sichello founded GSky in 2004 as a green roof/wall company. He abandoned green roofs three years later to focus on walls.

Privately held GSky has grown to become the leading living-wall provider in North America, Sichello says. He estimates his company does about half of the continent’s livingwall industry, with the rest divided between fewer than a dozen other companies.

GSky has seven employees in Vancouver and three contractors in the U.S. Last year, it drew revenues of $1.4 million.

This year, Sichello says the com-pany is on track to post revenues up to $1.7 million.

Four of the five largest living walls on the continent – including the 3,017-square-foot wall in downtown Calgary’s CORE Shopping Centre and the 4,072-square-foot titleholder at Pennsylvania’s Longwood Gardens – are GSky creations.

In Vancouver, GSky has done a three-storey wall at Vancouver International Airport’s Canada Line station. Its 2,000-square-foot exterior wall at a Whole Foods store in the city’s South Cambie area has 26,000 plants.

Life hasn’t always been a bed of roses for GSky.

The company was growing every year until the 2008 recession hit and revenues took a sudden nosedive.

Clients, even large multinational companies, weren’t paying the bills, Sichello says. Meanwhile, suppliers were on his doorstep. He had to let all but one of his employees go.

“It was incredibly stressful,” Sichello recalls. “Every single morning, I’ll get up and make a list of who I was going to call that day, knowing I’d just be leaving messages because no one was answering the phone.”

But GSky weathered the storm, went back to its fundamentals – good products, good customer service, honesty and fairness – and is now back on track, Sichello says.

The firm has clinched a deal with at least 19 West Elm stores in the U.S. and, in partnership with a global interior-landscaping firm, is set to launch some of its products in Europe next year.

Various patented systems for living walls have been developed since French botanist Patrick Blanc conceived of the idea in the 1980s.

GSky has four models. The Whole Foods and Canada Line walls in Vancouver use square panels filled with coconut fibre that are then arranged in a stainless-steel grid. The plants are popped into pockets on the panels and allowed to take root in the nursery before they are delivered and installed at the site, along with a built-in irrigation system.

The process takes eight to 16 weeks. The walls cost between $100 to $200 per square foot, depending on size.

“We’ve gained a reputation in the industry for the most reliable system out there,” Sichello says.

GSky has also developed a cheaper, easier-to-install alternative designed to look like a three-by seven-foot cabinet that uses regular four-inch potted plants slotted onto shelves and only takes three weeks to install.

Maureen Connelly, director of B.C. Institute of Technology’s Centre for Architectural Ecology, says green walls – whether they’re living walls like GSky’s or a green facade, where greenery is planted at grade and grows on a net or trellis – are gaining popularity in North America largely due to their visibility and esthetic appeal.

“They are out there for people to see,” she says. “They engage our human affinity for nature.”

Green walls do not have the same environmental benefits as green roofs because of their smaller scale, Connelly says.

To realize full ecological benefits, they also need a system of harvesting rainwater for irrigation as maintaining green walls can gobble up a lot of water.

The biggest benefit of green walls, she says, is that they pack a powerful wow factor and make people think green.

“We see them on the street. We see them walking outside Whole Foods. We can touch it,” she says. “Green roofs are not necessarily accessible.”

Aside from esthetic appeal, proponents say green walls have a host of other benefits: lower temperatures, improved air quality and a reduction in noise pollution and energy costs.

Sichello said 60 per cent of GSky’s projects are custom architecture jobs, while 35 per cent are for corporate clients including W Hotels, Westin Hotels and Microsoft. Private homes make up the remaining five per cent.

Many companies may already be incorporating green efforts into their operations, such as recycled carpets or composting toilets, but “nobody really sees them,” Sichello says.

“With the green wall, it’s instant impact.”

Sichello estimates North America’s living-wall market – not including green facades – at about $3.5 million to $4 million, with the potential to grow to up to $200 million a year.

Green walls, he predicts, will become a fixture of the urban landscape in the next few years.

“They’re going to become a staple in all buildings, he says. “They’re going to be as common as bathrooms.”

http://cocokelley.blogspot.com/2011/10/welcome-to-seattle-west-elm.html

WELCOME TO SEATTLE, WEST ELM!

http://www.homebysunset.com/home_by_sunset/2011/10/west-elm-in-seattle.html

http://jamieofalltrades.typepad.com/my_weblog/2011/10/west-elm-in-seattle.html

west elm in seattle!

Versa Wall at Open Road BMW Langley, B.C. a hit

http://www.lawnandlandscape.com/ll-092911gsky-green-wall.aspx

GSky Plant Systems, Inc., has built its Pro Green Wall Panel System for speed at Open Road BMW/Mini Cooper near Vancouver in Langley, B.C.

The 500-square-foot Pro Wall, which features 7,026 plants and 500 panels with 32 custom panels, was designed by GSky designer Deborah Kotalic and the Vancouver-based landscape architectural firm of Eckford and Associates. The plants in the Pro Wall were grown by EVL Nursery in Langley.

The plants in the Pro Wall are: Euonymus Fortunei ‘Emerad Gaiety,’ Vinca Minor, Heuchera  ‘Purple Palace,’ Polypodium ‘Licorice Fern,’ and VacciniumOvatum.

The arcs, which are composed of the Fern and Ovatum, represent the wheels in motion.

“Working with Open Road BMW was a fun project,” said GSky President Chad Sichello. “Everyone wanted a design that reflected the performance of BMW automobiles and I think that’s exactly what we accomplished. In addition, it was a great opportunity to show off GSky’s Pro Wall capabilities and technology.”