Green is Good

I love trees. And I would guess that this is a fairly common sentiment. After all, how many would truly, wholeheartedly, disagree with such a statement? They’re majestic, giants of the natural world, and they are everywhere, even in a city as urban as Toronto. However, have you ever taken some time, even just 5 minutes, to truly admire a tree?

Trees are beautiful, inherently valuable, and a primary producer of the oxygen we breathe, and the benefits don’t end there. Trees provide shade, helping to cool us down in Toronto’s hot, humid summers, and allowing us to keep the air conditioning on low. They improve air quality, mitigating the effects of air pollution, and even help us manage the impact of storms and flooding.

Now these are all rather intuitive traits of the greenery around us and likely have already been discussed in everyone’s high school biology class. However, over the last 25 years a steady stream of research has emerged exploring the countless benefits of being in nature. The mere presence of trees promotes our well-being, physically, mentally, and emotionally. Humans find nature calming. Those who live more than 1 km away from green space have 1.42 times higher odds of experiencing stress than those living within 300 m of a park.¹ Being able to immerse ourselves in nature at any given moment has an immense impact on stress and anxiety reduction.

As for physical well-being, patients in hospitals don’t even need to step outside into nature to experience these benefits. Those who recovered in rooms with a view of trees experienced smoother post-surgery recoveries and shorter hospital stays than those whose windows looked out over brick walls and parking lots.² Increased tree canopy cover around nursing homes across the United States is linked with fewer residents suffering from depression³. This pattern of increased tree canopy cover leading to physical health benefits can be tracked throughout our lives, from the very beginning. Greater canopy cover near a mother’s home reduces the risk of her babies being born underweight, a correlation that has been documented across multiple continents.^4,5 Already we can see the benefits that could arise if urban planning prioritized increasing the number of trees planted and overall canopy cover around hospitals and in neighbourhoods with schools, full of young families.

This association between natural surroundings and health benefits continues as we head towards adolescence. Kids with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) are able to concentrate better after going for a 20 minute walk in a city park than after having taken a walk downtown or even around a residential neighbourhood.⁶ Maybe someday, health practitioners will prescribe a “dose of  nature” alongside more traditional medication.

For those in high school, exposure to nature during lunch times is linked to better performance on standardized tests, higher graduation rates, and an increased percentage of students planning to attend college post-graduation.⁷ It’s almost hard to believe that the difference between your high school cafeteria having a window with a picturesque forest view or yet another concrete parking lot can shape what the rest of your life looks like. But then again, as we now know this pattern pops up again and again throughout the course of our lives.

While there remain many avenues for future research to untangle the numerous variables at play, the take home message is that time in nature is time well-spent. On this note, I am signing off and going for a walk in the park. Check out the identification key below if you’d like to join me in spotting a few of Toronto’s most common street trees!