From Deseret News archives:
Garden therapy: Just looking at natural vistas may help improve your mental, physical health
Common sense and experience tell us that hiking in the wild or working in a garden can be emotionally restorative. Now, scientists are beginning to understand why: Gardening or simply observing a lush landscape holds a powerful ability to promote measurable improvements in mental and even physical health.
Building on the science, a new practice of horticulture therapy is sprouting. Increasingly, hospitals are using the insights of environmental psychologists to build small but elaborate gardens for patients, visitors and even stressed-out doctors. Some urban botanical gardens and health-rehabilitation centers are creating so-called healing gardens with horticultural-therapy programs that teach patients and the public about the recuperative effect the natural world has on the human psyche.
"If a researcher had seriously proposed two decades ago that gardens could improve medical outcomes, the position would have been met with skepticism by most behavioral scientists, and with derision by most physicians," says Roger Ulrich, a Texas A&M University professor and a leading researcher in the effects of environment on behavior. "We now have studies showing that psychological and environmental factors can affect physiological systems and health status."
One study published in June found that people who were exposed to nature recovered from stress more quickly than others who weren't; what's more, the positive effects took hold within just a few minutes. Ulrich's research has shown that hospitalized patients whose windows looked out at landscape scenery recovered from surgery more quickly than those without such access. Other studies have found that simply viewing a garden or another natural vista can quickly reduce blood pressure and pulse rate and can even increase brain activity that controls mood-lifting feelings.








