Good Nature: Why Seeing, Smelling, Hearing, and Touching Plants is Good for Our Health
“Our senses don’t lie. Nature is good for us, and Good Nature: Why Seeing, Smelling, Hearing and Touching Plants Is Good for Our Health is a brilliant read.”
Compellingly written, Good Nature: Why Seeing, Smelling, Hearing, and Touching Plants Is Good for Our Health is a roadmap to the current academic literature making the case that connecting with the natural world improves human health and well-being.
The book has three goals: 1) “to understand how we are physically and mentally affected . . .” by nature; 2) to elucidate the best ways to interact with natural elements to maximize health benefits; and 3) to emphasize the science that shows the mechanisms that bring these outcomes. The author meets these goals with intellectual curiosity and a wide-range of first-rate scientific studies.
Kathy Willis, the book’s author and a University of Oxford professor, does several things well. First, she focuses on four senses, excluding taste. This allows her to dive into the areas least studied about human responses to plants; taste, and by relationship cooking and nutrition, is a very different area that has received a great deal of attention. Second, she brings the reader on her personal journey with plants, sharing why she loves the scientific literature so much. Both choices make the subject relatable.
Not a standard academic work, the author eschews formality and jargon, Good Nature carefully knits together a story about myriad ways in which even cursory or brief interactions with natural settings can have immediate positive impacts on our well-being. The examples are persuasive.
Willis begins by sharing what initially caught her attention: a study showing that post-operative patients who saw trees out their windows healed significantly faster than those who saw a blank wall out their windows. This piqued her curiosity. Willis dove into an investigation of the human-nature connection in service to health. Her findings, from dozens of studies around the world, make up this book. Whether we see, hear, smell, or touch nature, specifically plants—indoors or outdoors—we are likely to feel better and become healthier.
While the findings might seem intuitive—we are part of our environments with concrete and asphalt being relatively recent inventions—the author uses scientific study to remove the pejorative connotations from phrases like “tree hugging.”
In the chapter, “The Proven Health Benefits of Tree-Hugging,” the author examines how touch is a vital part of our experience. Children want to run barefoot in the grass and feel the leaves on trees and plants. This desire bears out a list of benefits, as we experience when gardening or walking on wood rather than synthetic floors.
The book would be remiss if it didn’t address gardening. In “Digging for Health,” the benefits of gardening as therapy for people with conditions including dementia and schizophrenia are outlined. While “green prescribing” is still not clearly defined in the scientific literature, apart from Japanese “forest bathing,” the health benefits of gardening and being in the outdoors seems to be extensive. More research is being conducted.
Smell is an important element in our connection with the natural world. One study referenced indicates that people who smelled rose fragrance while driving showed improvements in driving. People in a simulated driving experiment sped least, didn’t crash, and felt more relaxed while driving. Perhaps it’s time for rose air fresheners instead of pine.
Soundscapes also influence our well-being. One study conducted in Chile created a map of “hotspots” for good sound in green spaces. Natural sounds—a babbling brook or birdsong—scored high for their ability to improve well-being. They were restorative of physical and mental health.
Ultimately, the author suggests that we not wait for urban planners to create more green spaces for us. We can add potted plants to our homes and offices, choose plants in our gardens that attract songbirds and pollinators, and make time to be in gardens or natural settings. We have agency to improve our health with these changes.
This book meticulously addresses the scientific literature related to how our senses provide us access to the natural world and the profoundly positive outcomes experiencing nature has on our mental and physical health. The book is both well indexed and referenced. It also has many diagrams to illustrate the points being made in several of the studies.
In addition to the black and white illustrations, there is a center section of color images. These are perhaps unnecessary. They don’t add significantly to the work, though they do not detract.
Ecopsychologists, gardening enthusiasts, campers, artists, surfers, musicians, and those who simply love getting outside, or even looking outside, will appreciate this book. Our senses don’t lie. Nature is good for us, and Good Nature: Why Seeing, Smelling, Hearing and Touching Plants Is Good for Our Health is a brilliant read.