The Mental Health Benefits of Greenspace

Recent experiments conducted with children show a link between nearby access to nature and improved ability to maintain attention. This is true in urban and rural settings. "Civic planners have long considered the inclusion of nature into everyday settings as a theoretical ideal -and more recently it was documented to be a human preference, says Jack Nasar, a professor of city and regional planning at Ohio State University. 'The newer work,' Nasar adds, 'is starting to say that vegetation is not only preferred, but it's physically restorative.'"