Trees are Good for People—and Vice Versa

Sarah Laskow begins an article for Next City by describing the work of Mark Taylor, a public health researcher at the University of Trnava in Slovakia. Taylor and his colleagues "collected data on two variables: the density of street trees and the number of antidepressant prescriptions in London’s 33 boroughs." The methodology made it possible to draw a "connection between nature and mental health without relying on people’s own accounts of their well-being."

The study, published in the Landscape and Urban Planning Journal, found that "even after adjusting for factors like unemployment and affluence, the areas that have the most trees along the streets also had fewer prescriptions for antidepressants."

Laskow also describes the research of Jess Vogt, a visiting assistant professor at Furman University, in South Carolina, whose research examines the following question: "How can people help street trees thrive — and vice versa?" Vogt examined 35 projects, in 25 Indianapolis neighborhoods. "They documented whether 1,345 trees had lived or died and looked more closely at 616 trees, to see how they’d grown." Vogt's findings suggest that the trees' quality of life "wasn’t just influenced by its immediate surroundings, but by the people they interacted with."