Neuroarchitecture and Landscaping: Healing Spaces and the Potential of Sensory Gardens
Ciro Férrer Herbster Albuquerquearchdaily.com
Neuroarchitecture and Landscaping: Healing Spaces and the Potential of Sensory Gardens
The researchers noted: ‘Forest bathing [being calm and quiet among the trees, and observing nature while breathing deeply] may have potential preventive effects on depression.’ While the clean air and visual interest of a forest play a part, the compounds that trees produce to protect themselves – phytoncides – have this big effect.
When we are deprived of green, of plants, of trees, most of us (though evidently not all of us) succumb to a demoralization of spirit which we usually blame on some psychological or neurochemical malady, until one day we find ourselves in a garden or park or countryside and feel the oppression vanish as if by magic.
— Robert Harrison: Gardens: An Es
... See moreGardening is unusual in the extent to which it encompasses the emotional, physical, social, vocational and spiritual aspects of life. This, of course, is its strength but it also makes it hard for research to do it justice.
Sue Stuart-Smith • The Well Gardened Mind
I have come to understand that deep existential processes can be involved in creating and caring for a garden. So I find myself asking, How does gardening have its effects on us? How can it help us find or re-find our place in the world when we feel we have lost it?