Friday, August 24, 2007

A Walk in the Park

After all the rain this week, the flowerbeds at Fernwood Botanical Garden in Niles were looking especially lush, as we walked down to the summerhouse. The lawns were luxuriant and green, and the flowerbeds were bursting with spires of white hydrangea, golden coins of black-eyed susans and plumes of ornamental grasses.  I was there to take part in an annual back-to-school retreat with a group of my colleagues before classes start.

The summerhouse was tucked away down a secluded path, and its wide picture windows gave onto a woodland view.  With its rustic wooden interior and its slightly mildewed smell, the place felt like an old holiday cabin.  At lunchtime, we took a walk through the sensory garden where one is invited to sniff specimens of lemon geranium and acrid tansy flowers.  Perhaps that’s why at the end of the day we had concluded all our business and yet still felt relaxed.

One highlight of my summer was spending ten days on vacation at my in-laws’ cabin in Northern Minnesota.  In addition to the pleasures of being among three generations of family, there was the delight of being out in the woods or on the lake everyday.  There is nothing so sweet as a dip in a freshwater lake, as loons call through the early morning mist.  The lake is smooth as a mirror, before the fishermen start their motorboats, and the world feels utterly peaceful.  There’s a painted turtle who frequents the dock, and if you’re lucky you’ll see a bald eagle, or a kingfisher hunting along the shore.  After a few days up north among the pines and silver birches, I feel the stresses of everyday life slip away.

It is a commonplace that, as our lives are increasingly delimited by city blocks and asphalt, spending time in nature helps us relax and reflect.  Even in the seventeenth century, the poet Andrew Marvell praised the Quiet and Innocence to be found in a garden, that calmed his soul with a green Thought in a green Shade, and the later Romantics expected rugged mountain prospects to offer mere mortals a glimpse of the Sublime.  By the nineteenth century, the visionary landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmstead, was arguing that urbanites would benefit both physically and psychologically from access to green-space even within the city.  This insight shaped his influential design for New York City’s beloved Central Park.

Now science has weighed in to affirm and refine the everyday observation that being around greenery peps people up.  A classic paper published in Science in 1984 tracked the recovery time of patients after gall-bladder surgery.* It was reported that patients whose hospital room overlooked trees needed less pain medication and got better more quickly than those with a view of a brick wall. So maybe those gifts of potted plants and flower-baskets for ailing friends deliver therapy, as well as our good wishes.  Subsequent studies have yielded similar results about the links between human well-being and contact with nature.

More recently, a study from the grimy industrial town of Sheffield, in the United Kingdom, refines the observation that leafy parks make city folks feel better.  The researchers measured the number of different plants, butterflies and birds in each area, then interviewed park users about their moods.  They found that the greater the species diversity found in the park, the better human users said they felt.  The authors of the study encourage urban planners to manage green spaces so that many different plant and animal species can thrive.  Along with promoting biodiversity, this will help human park users feel – and think - better.

This fall, why not enjoy a stroll among the prairie plants of Mishawaka’s new Beutter Park, or explore the River Walk along the banks of the St. Joseph River in South Bend.  It will lift your spirits and calm your soul.

*Ulrich, R.S. 1984. “View Through a Window May Influence Recovery from Surgery.” Science 224:420-421.

Broadcast by Louise Collins on August 24, 2007
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