Greensboro’s David Phillips founded Challenging Forces in a bid to create an entirely new kind of infrastructure: a real, functional plant-filled ecosystem that not only fits well in office buildings, airports or hospitals, but can flourish and diversify like a real garden.
These ecosystems, composed of three or more tiers of plants with an artfully designed ground-level aquarium, provide much more than decoration, according to Phillips.
Unlike potted plants, which often require higher levels of day-to-day maintenance, or wall paintings, the “Climate Gardens” his startup produces last long-term, require limited maintenance and provide a “natural calming effect,” through their unobtrusive, trickling water sounds.
Phillips compared the engineering to regular house plants. He estimated the average hotel, hospital or corporate office has between 20 and 100 plants, with no direct illumination or irrigation system supporting them, outside of overhead lights and occasional watering.
“There’s also not a plan for getting rid of the plants once they are dead, so they just sit there and look terrible,” Phillips said.
Engineering ecosystems
An upper mathematics teacher at John F. Kennedy High School in Winston-Salem, Phillips built his biological engineering experience in large-scale ecosystem construction and restoration through the Army Corps of Engineers and the fishing industry.
He principally worked on projects involving salmonid passage through the dam systems of the Snake and Columbia Rivers, and as an observer at the fisheries in the Bering Sea. Through these experiences, he developed a skill for creating long-lasting modular systems that could be transported and reassembled.
“My specific expertise is not just in creating ecosystems that last and are well balanced and are beautiful, but also in engineering a structure that integrates [those ecosystems] into a facility,” Phillips said. “A completely unique element that’s never really been fully explored or done before.”
He has thus far used his expertise to create a better plant-based addition to corporate and hospitality spaces. This involves an automatic irrigation system that continuously waters the plants, dubbed the “plant-based aquarium,” and an automatic LED-reflective lighting system that ensures the indoor plants will not dry out despite not receiving day-to-day care.
The only maintenance required amounts to a professional biologist, such as Phillips or another Challenging Forces member, checking the system on a monthly basis to clean out the irrigation and possibly exchange plants.
“It’s a ‘set it and forget it,’ so it’s taken care of for you,” Phillips said.
For that same reason, beyond the initial cost of installation, adding a Climate Garden to a space does not lead to additional maintenance expenses for the company at hand—or lost work time for employees figuring out how to handle garden upkeep.
Alongside other Challenging Forces team members with backgrounds in the Army Corps of Engineers, Forest Service, and Fish and Wildlife, Phillips began building his Climate Gardens in 2024 and integrating them into homes and backyards. The feedback they received consistently backed up that the systems were “excellent” and “extremely effective” as visually pleasing plant displays.
Growing (indoor) gardens
Since those early days, the startup’s Climate Gardens have become more advanced in their engineering and have been more broadly repurposed as stress relievers that can efficiently improve the visuals of spaces.
The name Challenging Forces itself draws on the concept of challenging the stressful forces of life. Phillips said he first developed the idea as he thought of how to naturally improve the spaces people commonly live and work in.
“When you think about your favorite place or where you actually want to be, are you usually surrounded by televisions and drywall and PDA systems blasting things?” Phillips asked. More commonly, as he described it, those favorite places as ones with flowing water and lots of greenery.
“We’re trying to take the things that are most prevalent and harm people the most directly on a very regular basis, and providing a direct challenge to that,” he said.
QUICK BITS
Startup: Challenging Forces LLC
Founder: David Phillips
Founded: 2023
Team size: 5-10
Location: Greensboro, NC
Website: Challenging Forces
This past March, Challenging Forces attended and presented at CED’s Venture Connect. Phillips said the event led to “invaluable” connections.
“We made Climate Gardens accessible to a lot of people,” Phillips said. “More people are getting engaged with biophilic infrastructure… then trying to integrate [the gardens] into their facilities, and we are the premier company that allows that to happen within organizations.”
Phillips also described the spring and summer seasons as some of the largest opportunities for growth. He hopes to move the second generation of Climate Gardnes (which includes a larger aquarium system) into North Carolina facilities and select pilot locations by the end of September.
“We’re trying to integrate ourselves into the Triangle, Triad and Charlotte-Wilmington hospitality, higher education, hospitals, airports and then just standard restaurants and bars,” Phillips said.
