From delicate ferns to towering palm trees, customers can look to Belinda's Tropical Paradise for full-service interior scaping. Belinda Marley, owner, started the business in Pittsburg, Kansas in 1986. She relocated to Olathe in 1991 and began serving the Kansas City area, with special focus on Johnson County.

Marley meets with clients to discuss the style they are trying to achieve and then creates a solution with live plants and trees. She also has extensive experience coordination with interior decorators on projects. Customers have the option of buying or leasing the plants. Whether purchased or leased, clients can buy a guaranteed monthly maintenance plan.

"The guaranteed maintenance means that in addition to taking care of the plant, if we find that something is wrong with the plant, we will replace it with a healthy plant," Marley explained.

Belinda's Tropical Paradise provides a wide variety of flora. Marley has set up elaborate poinsettia arrangements for holiday parties, and she has installed large trees and plants for permanent display. She cites a 17 foot marginata tree, soaring three flights, as an example of the extraordinary plants she can furnish.

"I have a wicked green thumb, and the plants speak for themselves," she summarized.

-Debra Williams

The Indoor Plant Does it's Bit for Cleaner Air. Those plants in your office or home are not only decorative, but scientists are finding them to be surprisingly useful in absorbing potentially harmful gases and cleaning the air inside modern buildings. Tightly sealed offices with their beautiful furnishings are proving to be hostile environments. All sorts of dangers lurk inside--formaldehyde and benzene fumes released from building materials, furniture and carpeting; ozone from copying machines; fumes from cleaning solvents; radon and secondhand smoke.

NASA Research Focuses on Living Plants. We all may be breathing a lot easier thanks to promising National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) research on a most sophisticated pollution-absorbing device; the common office and house plant.

The Interior Plantscape Division and Associated Landscape Contractors of America has joined with NASA in a two-year program to study the effectiveness of popular office plants in cleaning indoor air.

NASA research on indoor plants has found that living plants are so efficient at absorbing contaminants in the air that some will be launched into space as part of the biological life support system aboard future orbiting space stations.

Dr. Bill Wolverton, a NASA research scientist, believes that NASA's findings about indoor plants have some down-to-earth applications for cleaning dirty indoor air.

He estimates that 15 - 20 Golden Pothos and Spider Plants can clean and refresh the air in the average 1,800-square foot home.

INDOOR PLANTS FOR BETTER BREATHING. In the initial NASA studies over a dozen varieties of common interior plants were placed in sealed, Plexiglass chambers. Formaldehyde, a toxic chemical with the greatest exposure on humans, was introduced. Within 24 hours, the plants--philodendron, Spider Plant and golden Pothos--removed 80% of the formaldehyde molecules from the chamber.

NASA RESEARCH IDENTIFIES THE MOST EFFECTIVE POLLUTION FIGHTERS. Recent findings reveal that flowering lpants such as the Berbera Daisy and Chrysanthemum are extremely potent in purifying interior air. Other good performers are Draceana Massangena, Spathyphyllum, and Golden Pothos.

PLANTS CAN CLEAN THE AIR IN OUR ENVIRONMENT. NASA research has consistantly shown that living, green and flowering plants can remove several toxic chemicals from the air in building interiors. You can use plants in your office to improve the quality of air to make it a more pleasant place to work--where people feel better, perform better.

-Foilage For Clean Air Council