There’s a growing conversation about our responsibility to love and care for our planet. “Sustainability” has become a buzzword, and the question, “What can I do to help nurture a cleaner and greener planet?” is more relevant than ever.
While it’s true that now is our time to give back to the Earth, it’s important to remember that plants loved you first, and science is catching up to explain why.
In this blog, we are going to highlight specific ways that plants care for two of your highest priorities: health and wealth.
Health:
- Gardening is an effective way to reduce stress levels. It provides a natural and enjoyable way to channel our everyday frustrations into a positive activity that gives us pleasure.
- Behavioral researchers explored the link between flowers and emotion and concluded that flowers are a natural and healthy moderator of moods, having an immediate impact on happiness. Get your girl flowers today!
- Caring for plants, whether it’s a balcony garden, flower garden, lawn, potted plants, or house landscape, has a positive impact. Studies indicate that plant care is associated with reduced mental distress.
- In addition to creating positive mood changes, the presence of plants in hospital recovery rooms has been shown to reduce the time required to heal.
- Community parks offer free and safe exercise spaces, allowing people to spend more time outdoors. Proximity to parks is linked to higher fitness levels, as people enjoy beautiful surroundings while exercising.
- Trees reduce the amount of local noise pollution, add privacy, and improve the quality of life for you and your neighbors.
- Placing ornamental plants in an educational environment for children helps enhance learning capabilities by helping them concentrate better.
- This may seem like an obvious one but children playing on natural surfaces like turf grass at home or in parks have a lower risk of injury in case of a fall compared to children playing on artificial surfaces such as concrete or asphalt.
Wealth:
- Trees reduce the daily wear on building exteriors by protecting them from wind, moisture, and ultraviolet rays. Less cost for you later!
- Trees also provide an important cooling effect, ensuring that streets remain in better condition longer and saving the community on maintenance costs.
- Research has shown that professional landscaping yields an average of 109% return on investment when a house is sold. Worth a pretty yard!
- Studies have shown that employees working with flowers and plants had more creative ideas and solutions to problems they were given. Isn’t it this creative ideation that creates innovation, and if innovation, profit?
- Adding flowers and landscaping to the storefront can affect how customers perceive the business. It welcomes shoppers inside and reflects positively on the quality of goods or services sold. Bring on the foot traffic!
- People who grow their own gardens reduce their carbon footprint and protect the environment by reducing the transportation needed to move commercial crops to market. You are also saving money and eating healthier produce.
No matter your beliefs on how we got here, we are all unified around the idea that we started a lot closer to nature than we are now. While some call this progress, we continue to uncover countless benefits of proximity to plants. Like a mother nurturing her child, Mother Earth cares for us, and plants love you first.
So, returning to the question- What can I do to help nurture a cleaner and greener planet? Plants are your answer!
This blog was made in partnership with The Canadian Nursery Landscape Association, who work to create a thriving, professional, and ethical landscape industry that is recognized and valued for the environmental, economic, and lifestyle benefits it offers to the public. They started the Plants Love You initiative to spread awareness around the benefits of landscaping. To see more information, visit this page.
