Inside The Amazon Spheres - Tropical Jungle meets Office Building

I am so excited for today. I am at the Amazon Spheres and honestly it is such an impressive space and we're getting a little tour as well. So let's not mess around and have a look at this space and all of the beautiful, beautiful plants. Let's go! Yeah, this is the top floor of the spheres. This is a space that sometimes is like reserved for like after hours events and cocktail hours and that sort of thing. But it also kind of gives you a sense of like where we are in the city because you get to see all the surrounding buildings, most of which are Amazon corporate buildings. We're kind of surrounded on three sides at least. But you can also see the top of our living wall. You can see currently we have a installation from a partnership we do yearly with the Pacific Bonsai Museum. So they've actually donated five of their trees to be on display for the month and they actually have a docent here from the Bonsai Museum today as well to answer questions about the trees. We're not a true botanical garden here but in some ways we're connected with that world at least and we have a lot of people from botanical gardens on our staff or connections to like Atlanta Botanical Garden for instance or Fairchild. We have a lot of connections with the University of Washington. So that's a way we've like received plants over time, we trade material with different institutions, part of our exit to like conservation efforts. I think the main challenge over here is that you need to build a structure that works for the plants as well as humans, right? And usually plants like a little bit warmer, a little bit more humid than maybe your average office worker. Yeah the place was designed with humans first really as a workspace. So the initial design concept was to not be, this isn't meant to be a tropical rainforest, it was meant to be like a mid-montane cloud forest kind of environment. So our set points are actually pretty mild around room temperature. I don't know if most of your viewers are in Celsius but for us it would be like 72 degrees Fahrenheit as our set point and it fluctuates a little bit. Today is a sunny day, this top floor warms up first and then the HVAC can kind of respond. So we try to keep the humidity around 60 percent and the temperature around room temperature during the day. So it's you come in here in the winter time and it feels like very refreshing, come in on a hot day in the summer it can actually feel cooler in here. And it actually like if you walk to the other side of the floor plate here where the most of the air conditioning is like coming in, it's one of the coldest spots in the building. So we have microclimates throughout the space. It's also, even though it's one continuous space inside, it is three kind of interconnected spheres. So like we are actually standing on the border of two spheres right here. This archway here is kind of the connecting piece. So if you were to go to the same spot on the other side where we're in the smallest sphere, it's the warmest spot in building because you're like right up against the top of the sphere. So natural heat rising conditions. We have HVAC fans that I can show you on the lower floors that help with the circulation in the building. And we can turn the air over and adjust how much outside air is coming in versus recirculating based on outside conditions, inside condition. It's a smart building. I wasn't expecting anything less. I'm surprised to see so many grow lights. Some of them are on despite it being a sunny day. Is that, are the grow lights mainly for winter backup or are they always on? And why? Like given we have so many windows. Yeah, well we are in Seattle and we also are in downtown. So we get blocked by a lot of the neighboring tower buildings. And even since the spheres have opened, we've added new tower buildings surrounding us. So the light in the building has changed. They are grow lights and they do run 12 hours a day, different percentages depending on the time of year. So we do run them higher percentages in the wintertime when we get less natural light. But they are kind of supplemental lighting. In their current state, I wouldn't say they are sufficient for fully healthy plants alone. So we do require the sun definitely. And we're actually in the process of a major lighting upgrade that we have been working on for years. So come back this time next year and the lights should look very different. Oh my kind of permanently installed living walls as part of the architectural design. So this one up here, the main one that you can just see the top of over there above the railing actually runs the whole vertical length of the building. So it's about 65 feet tall, 55 feet wide. And across our living walls, we have approximately 200 species of plants, about 25,000 individual plants alone on the largest one. And we do a mix of species. You can see, you know, good diversity of aeroids. We have orchids, ferns, begonias, metanillas, different blueberry relatives. My eyes just instantly just look at anthurium, to be honest. Yeah. Cute VGI over there. Yeah, we have a lot of VGIs. We got the big monsteras. We got these anthurium cormelense that we've, a lot of the ones on the wall. What's the green wall setup? Like what's, are they all the same or do they differ? They're all the same. So it's essentially a synthetic fabric material similar to like what's in mesh backpack straps or in athletic shoes sewn into pockets. So very much like one of those over-the-door shoe racks. Plants go into the individual pockets. And at the very top of the wall, there is a header that runs the width of the wall with irrigation emitters every several inches. And the water drips down with fertilizer added into the water and slowly cascades down, feeding and watering all the plants. Excess water is caught at the bottom and that gutter there goes down a pipe about six floors below where we're standing into a giant reservoir, about a thousand gallons, where the pH and the electrical conductivity of the solution is measured and then it auto doses fertilizers, macros and micros, as well as adjust the pH for our set points and then recirculates the water. But the substrate itself is soil, you said, or like a mix, aeroid mix-ish kind of? We use minimal substrate on the plants, just enough kind of for the roots to hold on to, but they're getting all their nutrients they need from the water. It's like a pseudo hydroponic. Yeah, it's like you want some aggregate for the roots to grow on and sometimes it just adds a little bit of space between the pockets. Sometimes putting things in just bare root, they're a little loose, so having a little bit of material kind of gives them something more to grab on to. But yeah, you also find that like ferns will just like grow into the mesh and like a fern that's been on there for 10 years could be part of the fabric and it's like very difficult to remove. Yeah, so this specific technology was developed by Ben Ivan, who's kind of like our Amazon lead of horticulture and global design for horticulture in all Amazon spaces now. So this was his technology he developed and essentially was like brought to Amazon. Yeah, so the two arms hanging out there with the hooks, those cables actually drop down to the first floor and we hook up to a window washing basket essentially, a building maintenance unit where two of our horticulturists put on harnesses and strap in and that's how we maintain the wall. So three mornings a week starting around 5 30 a.m. we work from the top down in one section about 15 feet wide and work the wall looking for any material that needs to be pruned or pull dead leaves or replace any plants and just kind of methodically work our way down. So we have four individual drops about 15 feet wide as I mentioned and we do them sequentially and then start over. When you mean drops? One vertical section of the wall. And then it has a drainage part at the bottom or is it one continuous drainage for this one? For this wall there's two. Yeah, so we have a header at the top and then there's a drain and a second header about midway down just to make sure. Honestly, we could probably succeed with one singular the way the fabric works. You could probably do it with just one but it does have two. What's this big one in the middle? That's I believe it's anthurium pseudospectabile. Does that sound right? I don't know. Yeah, I'm not that advanced, sorry. Yeah, yeah, there's so many strapped leaf anthuriums but I'm pretty sure that's pseudospectabile. We can just enjoy it as a collection, I think. We don't need to maybe point at every single one but that one really stood out to me. So we have a mix, you know, of really rare plants and then like common plants but grown to their full potential. So yeah, like the phlebotium, orium, the blue star fern, like it's a really nice kind of contrast pop of color against, you know, the different greens. But yeah, common plant anybody can purchase along with some of the calatheas and some of the begonias and stuff. Also with tissue culturing now, so many of the plants that used to be rare are becoming very accessible. I mean, the plants don't know if they're rare or not. Exactly. For them, they don't differentiate, it's just us. They don't, yeah. And I saw some misters go off earlier. Is that just for humidity or is that just for visual effect? It's for humidity, yeah. So we do have this building broken up into various zones. So depending where we are, the misters could go off more frequently or less frequently. But they go off anywhere from once every 20 minutes to once every hour, roughly, for about a minute or two. This third floor, it's kind of like the smallest of the floors. It has a bunch of like working areas. We have the green room over there, which is kind of our like one sort of meeting space with the jade vine growing along. I think it's done flowering now, but we had a really impressive flowering this year. And then we also have these miniature living walls on the wall that are kind of like living art pieces. This one is carnivorous themed. So Saracenia and Panguicula. Yeah, some Nepenthes on there, some Nepenthes seedlings. Yeah, this one's always popular with folks. So I manage a team of six horticulturists, and everybody kind of has specialties. So we have two people who do living walls pretty much exclusively. One person who does our vivariums, so our terrariums and our aquariums and terrariums, which we haven't really seen yet. And then we have kind of like a person who oversees the New World or like Western Hemisphere plants and a person who oversees kind of the Eastern Hemisphere collection, and then a sixth person who kind of does a little bit of everything. And aside from the spheres, we also manage plants in about eight other buildings. So the spheres are, you know, kind of the crown jewel and our primary focus. Yeah, then over here we also have our canopy walk. And what is this one? Fig? Yeah, this is actually from your home country. This is Ficus rubiginosa, the rusty fig. Nice. Oh, we've got to talk about this one down there. But while we're here maybe, and we look at the beneficial bugs, is that your primary source of pest treatment? Yeah, so we cannot spray any pesticides in this building. It's a public space. So yeah, we rely primarily on beneficial insect release to maintain any kind of, we try to maintain a population of beneficials. So even if we're not seeing any outbreaks of anything, just prophylactic, you know, constantly releasing more. We use things like mites, predatory mites. We use parasitic wasps. We use chrysopa, lacewings, cryptolamus, the mealybug destroyer. We kind of use a little bit of everything. I mean, judging by your success, it's working. Yes, you know, it's not pest free. There's always going to be bugs, but it's pretty good. I love that attitude. I mean, I go into my plant hobby at home with that same attitude. I'm not aiming for pest eradication. It's like an ongoing pest management approach. Exactly. We do integrated pest management. We'll physically remove, you know, things when we see them, if there's like major issues. Good on you. They had to fully construct the spheres and get the parameters stable before bringing the tree in. So they actually had to deconstruct a section of the ceiling and then crane the tree in through an 18 foot hole at the very top. So it was about 55 feet tall when it was brought in. And we have an arborist team who comes in several times a year to help with keeping the tree pruned and keep the shape nice. You can also see into our faux tree stumps there that's concealing our fan system. So on both sides of the building, we have four of those. They really help with our air circulation in here and we can adjust it. The terrafolium, or how little floor? No, I think it's the terrafolium, right? Based on the flower. Yeah, the strappy one. So this area here, we call the fernary. This is our collection of Eastern Hemisphere plants. So primarily plants from tropical Asia and Africa with a few other odd balls mixed in. But you'll notice the raised beds here. So different than when we get down to the first floor, which is more of like a forest walk experience. And for Vietnamese moss frogs. Oh my god, it's right there. Yeah. No way. Where is it? There. Yeah. That is pretty crazy. No way. Yeah. There's another one on the background too. No way. This little blob there. That is crazy camouflage. So yeah, they're nocturnal. So they're just kind of hanging out during the daytime. That's a beautiful copria over there. Yep. Some interesting like ficus and labesias and ardesias, ferns and papyrus. Yeah, there's a mix. Metanillas from Madagascar. And when did this space open? We opened January of 2018. Were you involved already back then or when did you come in? So I was hired in January 2018 actually. And has the design, like obviously not the design of the building, but let's say like the design philosophy behind the plants and the spaces in which you create specific exhibitions, has that changed a lot over those years or did you pretty much get it right initially? Yeah, that's a great question. We, I think we got it right initially. I mean, the ask was for the spheres to look like year five on day one. So it was meant to be a mature garden aesthetic from the get-go. But early on the building, we didn't have epiphytes like in the tree, like ruby, for example, all those orchids and the pendulous anthuriums you saw, those weren't there. Initially we had just like the tree was the tree. And then over time we've kind of gone more natural in that sense. We've been adding more epiphytes, letting things take over, letting, you know, the mosses colonize and fern spores spread about. So we've kind of let that aspect of nature take over a bit more in our philosophy. But in terms of the overall, you know, we want to maintain really high standards for horticulture. We want to, you know, hopefully as you're walking around, you're not seeing yellow or brown leaves, you know, there's not going to be huge piles of leaf litter. We're not, it's not natural in that sense. So it's very curated, very manicured. So that has not changed and that maintains our standard. But we have let, you know, we've kind of let nature engulf some of the already planted areas a bit more. Yeah. Beautiful. We do rotating exhibits on the fourth floor is just like a bi-monthly kind of like, we call it like surprise and delight, just kind of something new people, we change the themes of those year over year. We haven't changed the building parameters. That's not really going to change. We've adjusted our set points ever so slightly to not be quite as cold at night because we used to drop down into the fifties Fahrenheit. We've dropped into about 57 degrees Fahrenheit and we've increased our set point to about 60, 62. So it's not quite as cold at night because we were noticing over time we have used perhaps more true lowland species in here that are able to handle our conditions, especially daytime, but they didn't like that extreme temperature drop at night. And we're not keeping true highland species that were, we're kind of too warm for the real highland stuff and too cold for the lowland. So we've kind of narrowed our band a little bit, but it's just been trial and error with a lot of species. Like we hope it does well, we'll see. And then, you know, a lot of them thrive and some don't. So our collection has, you know, adapted in that time, but not significantly. At large, you don't notice like a massive difference walking through now compared to five years ago? No. A lot of the plants were, you know, like actually like that tree fern was the first plant planted in the spheres nine years ago. There was like a, you know, ceremony. Yeah, exactly. I think it was like, I remember this tree here, this, called the flamethrower palm because the new fronds are bright red. I remember when that tree, when I first started working here was like barely this high. And now it's, you know. It would be such a rewarding space to work in, you know, to see the space grow with you through the love that you put in. Good on you. The common name is like the dragon Yeah, it goes bonkers. It started out as, you know, immature foliage and then over time it's just pretty much all of our monuments in this area, it's taken over. So we just have to go up there and hack it down every once in a while. Yeah, that's pretty. And look at that cupria. The cuprias are doing really well in this space, huh? Yeah, another habit area here. Look at this begonia. Well, look at the size of the begonia, no? That's pretty crazy. Yeah, I think the cupria is taking over. Yeah, we've, you know, honestly allocations aren't, aren't the easiest for us. So when we find one that works, we double down. What's the challenge? Because they like highlight. Yeah, they just, I don't know what it is. I mean, they are prone to pests. So that's a challenge, like the porty eyes in particular, like there's one over there that you're about to get to, like, I feel like that one's always been a challenge. Such a lush, crazy mix, like, you know, really beautiful. Yeah, and some medium zeppelinum. It's an imidium, yep. Very pretty. Port, yeah, that's the porty eye you were talking about. Yeah, that's the porty eye. There was another one, a different one that we've moved. I think this might be, yeah, I think this is the only one we have currently. And like originally, there was a bunch of large sarians planted on the other side of this bed. But over time, they just got, they just got too big. And we had to, we basically had to start a new grove over here. So these are kind of our newer sarians. I mean, look at these. Yeah, that is crazy. But yeah, we had some with really impressive trunks before. So these ones will get there in a couple of years. I mean, in a space like that, to me, it's very obvious that it's highly curated. But I think a lot of people don't understand that every botanic garden is actually highly curated. It's not letting plants grow wild. It's actually about curating them, managing them, chopping them, propagating them. Exactly. Yeah, there's layering that happens. You know, naturally things are going to want to choke each other out. Yeah, like it's a deliberate effort. It doesn't just, you just chuck things there and they just happen to grow wild. It's like you actually deliberately look after and curate it. Yeah, there's also that really nice metanilla on the corner there. Oh, yes. I think that's magnificum. Yes, I agree. What are we looking for in here? Dart frogs, geckos, glass frogs, adalophus. I can't see anything. Well, there's one on the glass. Oh, no way. I can see his guts. Yeah, that's a glass frog. Sacatomia albumaculata. You should be able to see his heart beating too. This one's all Southeast Asian themed fish and plants. They're called glass catfish, totally translucent. Those are native to Thailand. Glass catfish, southern Thailand. It's the only place in the world. So really, really cool fish. Well, we saw the aquarium. We saw the living wall. Now we have what's our largest kind of conservatory area over here, which we call the forest. We got a little peek of this from the third floor canopy walk. But this is our Western Hemisphere collection, with the exception of the three largest trees, just because they couldn't fit anywhere else in the building. But you'll notice a lot of plants from Central and South America. Is there a reason why you separate Western and... Sorry, what was it? Western and Eastern, right? Eastern was on the other side. Is there a reason why you separate it, or is it just for show purposes? I think there's a little bit of the natural history. It makes more sense, I think, especially if you've been to Costa Rica, which a lot of people have been from this part of the world. This looks like what it should look like, more or less, in that part of the world. And it's just a different feel if you've ever spent time in a jungle in Asia versus a jungle in South America. So on the living wall, we mix the palette. But it is, I think, nicer and more natural to have it broken up thematically that way. There's a lot of great growers in Ecuador now, so plants from that part of the world are pretty accessible. The plants would still get along, you know what I mean? Oh, yeah, they would. It's not like in the zoo where you'll be like, oh, we can't put these two animals in there, they're going to eat each other. Oh, Spiritus Sancti over there in the back, that's pretty. Patricii. Very pretty. Milano at the top over there. Yeah, we had like one of the best specimens of Spiritus Sancti for sure. We got that one from Annecy Tropicals like years ago. I like to call it like painting with plants sometimes. We're all artists in different ways. Honestly, yes, it's curated, and yes, we go for natural, but trying to make something look natural is an art, I think. For sure. Yeah, I like what you said, painting with plants. That's very much what you do, right? Yeah, and I think a lot of times people who grow house plants or people who grow plants in terrariums, they don't know what the full potential of the plant is. This is an opportunity to see what the plants want to do if you give them the space to do it, but also it's, you know, it's not feasible for everybody. So it's kind of nice to see that plant that, yes, is common, that maybe you could buy at your grocery store or hardware store, but see what it could look like if it was given the right parameters. Yeah, to me, it's always massive inspiration seeing places like that because I can look at, okay, what can I take from this and incorporate into my own indoor journey? Obviously, I'm not going to grow them quite as impressive, but for example, a structure like that where you just have a support beam and then lots of bromeliads, air plants, and so on, hanging out, you can create this in a smaller version. You know, it's more just about getting inspired, maybe finding a new species here and there, and look at these, for example, that's incredible. Yeah, it looks like so pretty. Is that a varicose above it too? That is a varicose. It's definitely a type I'm not familiar with. It could be the... I need to ask Viola. She would know, but that's a pretty one. Very pretty. Look at that caterpillar. Massive as well. And then here, you obviously supplement a little more with light as well down in the... Yeah, we can aim. So we have the lights on the bottom of the canopy walk that we can try to get the understory a little bit more lit. We're also kind of on the north side of the building, so we get less natural light over here. And massive buildings around us as well. So the natural arc of the sun is kind of that way. So this area tends to be on the darker side, but we do get an interesting reflection off the glass. Do plants sometimes burn based on the reflection? Have you had that happen? Occasionally, yeah. Particularly on the second floor on the edge there, because the glass is so close to the beds, whereas here we have a bit more space. It kind of shields the plants a little bit more. It's pretty. Look at that. A cute queen. That's a queen. Yeah, that's definitely a queen. And this is ginger? That's a costus, a spiral ginger. There's actually a lot of plants here. Every single little garden bed has so much variety. And I suppose you, again, actively are involved in not having one variety overtake everything. So there's active pruning involved in every single garden bed, right? Yeah, for sure. So we have over a thousand species in the building. So yeah, we have kind of our cover crop, our things that are multiple places that do really well, but we try to diversify as much as possible and add an interest in layering textures, colors. It's kind of nice near the edges where you can have plants cascading over. And then even the rocks, like, you know, that make a difference as well, having like the landscape to then put the plants in in the first place. And this is natural basalt stone from British Columbia in Canada. So sourced relatively close by. So it gets that really interesting, like, shape to it. It's like a hexagonal almost, a lot of them. They naturally come like that? Yeah, they do. Cool. That one is cool. Something with P, no? Yep. Podatum. Podatum. Wow. Really nice flowers, like, on this neotropical blueberry. Oh, it's that sign there. It's the Aristolochia arborea. Yeah. That is crazy. Yeah. Most of them are vines, but yeah, this is a tree farm. Absolutely incredible. A nice dubia up there. I can't believe that you guys still need to supplement with more light. That makes me think I'm not doing enough. Well, Rob, thank you so much for having us. I have one last personal question. What is your favorite plant or installation? What's your favorite space? Sure. Well, I'm biased. My favorite are the terrariums upstairs with the frogs in them. That's just kind of like what's close to my heart. So I still maintain the one with the poison frogs and the glass frogs. So I have to say that's my favorite. Good on you. Good on you. I will probably choose the 10 meter tall green wall. That's my personal favorite. 20 meter tall. 20 feet. So yeah, about 20 meters. Exactly. No, that's definitely my cup of tea and definitely gives me inspiration for my future house manifesting on here. So I look forward to seeing that. To make it work, why don't you give this video a thumbs up, leave a nice comment down below, and of course, subscribe to my channel as well. And we'll see you soon with more Seattle content. Thank you so much, Rob. Really appreciate it. Of course. Thanks.