Review of Good Nature by Kathy Willis – Flower Power | Science & Nature Books

IFor stressed office workers, one of the easiest things you can do for yourself is to buy flowers. Survey conducted by Chiba University Japanese researchers found that employees who had a vase of pink roses at their desk experienced a physiologically calmer state after just four minutes. The scent of roses has a calming effect, so in the experiment Making people better drivers: Slower, more relaxed, less likely to crash. Another studyIn a study in which subjects were monitored for brain activity while looking at flowers using electroencephalograms, yellow flowers It was awesome To increase productivity and creative thinking.

Cathy Willis is a professor of biodiversity at the University of Oxford, and her new book on the emerging science of how nature improves health is full of practical tips that show how even small amounts of increased contact with plants can make a big difference. Willis became interested in these surprising effects while working as scientific director at Kew Gardens. 1984 paper Featured in Science Magazine Patients undergoing gallbladder surgery have been found to recover faster if their hospital windows could see trees rather than a wall. Similarly, studies have shown that school and university students perform better and are less stressed if their classroom windows have a view of greenery.

Why can simply looking at plants have such a big impact? In the '90s, behavioral scientist Roger Ulrich and his colleagues proposed the so-called stress reduction theory, arguing that humans are biologically predisposed to pay attention to natural scenes, which trigger “positive emotional states.” Since then, experiments have demonstrated that looking at plants triggers physiological changes that make us more resistant to stress. Some scientists think this is part of our evolutionary heritage, a reminder of the savanna-like landscapes where our African ancestors once lived.

Aside from vision, our sense of smell is one of the most direct mechanisms by which the natural world can change our state of mind. A volatile organic molecule called pinene is released by many trees, especially conifers, and is responsible for the refreshing scent of forests and Christmas trees. Just 90 seconds of sniffing pinene-filled air can lower your heart rate. And the scent of cypress and juniper trees not only relaxes people, it has also been found to increase natural killer cells, which play a role in fighting off viruses and cancer. This suggests that we may have underestimated the potential medicinal benefits of forest walks.

Willis has focused on an interesting and provocative subject, but it is a pity that she uses few of the techniques that popular science writers usually employ to bring it to life. There are no interviews with scientists, no visits to pioneering projects to rewild urban spaces, no real stories. A chapter on the health benefits of gardening includes a long, banal quote from a “close friend's relative,” but she could have visited any garden in Britain and brought back a compelling story about how growing vegetables has transformed her life. Not to mention the charities that use gardening to help ex-prisoners and people with mental health conditions rebuild their lives. As a result, Good Nature comes across as a rather dry overview of the latest research, with frequent digressions into, for example, the science of petal color, and Willis misses an opportunity to make a strong case for the political and social implications of her work.

After all, she Antidepressant prescriptions are minimal It is the London borough with the highest tree density, even when other factors such as local unemployment rates are taken into account. Explore your neighborhood A study in Milton Keynes, Luton and Bedford found that where at least 20-35% of the land around homes was covered by trees and shrubs, rates of anxiety and depression were lower. It is estimated that increasing tree planting could save the area between £500 million and £2.6 billion a year in health costs. Green spaces are decreasingWillis also writes that nearly a third of new and renovated buildings are “sick,” meaning they are designed in a way that increases the risk of non-communicable diseases like cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Reading her book, I realized that unequal access to nature is a much bigger social justice issue than I had realized, but Willis doesn't get to that point.

Rather, she is keen to highlight the steps we can take as individuals to harness the health-enhancing benefits of nature, arguing that we don't need to wait for city planners and politicians to create more green spaces for us. That's why the book is full of suggestions for measures that almost anyone can implement, from taking a 20-minute nature walk every day to gardening without gloves to keeping plants outside your front door (front gardens have a bigger impact on our mental health than backyards).

If Willis had focused more on greening urban spaces and the politics of the buildings that are literally killing us, Good Nature It would have been a much bigger, more ambitious book, but it inspired me to change my life in so many little ways: I vowed to buy more houseplants (and try harder to keep them alive), I let my kids play in the dirt more, and I bought myself some flowers.