Scientists are developing a “wellbeing blueprint” for gardens that will help schools and hospitals landscape their green spaces so people can get as much calm and joy from them as possible.
At the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) experimental garden in Wisley, Surrey, landscape designers have made a garden split into many sections, with different coloured flowers and scents. Some areas have strong, arousing smells such as pine and rosemary, while others have flowers that bloom with sweet, soft, calming scents. Some parts have brightly coloured blooms, while others have pale green and white themes.
When it is all in bloom later this year, an experiment will take place to find out what the garden arouses in people. Dr Lauriane Chalmin-Pui, a scientist at the RHS in charge of wellbeing, said: “What we hope to find is, what are the different features that impact how gardens can best improve wellbeing?”
The scientist, who has a PhD in social engagement with nature from the University of Sheffield, said different people and places may need different types of wellbeing gardens.
“For someone who is anxious, maybe they do need something as calming as possible. But actually, sometimes if you’re feeling depressed, you probably don’t need that, maybe you need something to uplift you,” she said.
“We are looking at the whole human range of emotions. So it’s really about gardens being a place for that diversity and to be able to process the diversity of emotions.”
The RHS says its aim is to promote the “health, social and cultural value of green spaces for the general population as well as for specific groups of people who may not otherwise have access to safe and private gardens”.
It hopes the research can be used in particular in the UK’s health and social care systems to boost health outcomes.
To find out what to plant in gardens, Chalmin-Pui is doing a range of experiments, including one that isolates different garden smells. Thousands of people visiting Wisley have provided her with data about what emotions each plant evokes – which calm, and which arouse. She has also monitored the heart rate and sweat levels of people doing difficult tasks while in a room with different types of flowers, to see if flowers can have a calming effect. Her findings will be available later this year.
“This is all to make a blueprint,” said Chalmin-Pui, who is seeking to find ways to optimise the guidance for wellbeing. As an analogy she suggests: “If you wanted to optimise gardens for pollinators or something like that, you would pick the food that that pollinator would want. And we want to do that, but for wellbeing.”
She hopes this blueprint can be used in schools that cater for children with special educational needs, as well in hospital gardens and private homes.
And the principles can still be applied to small spaces, she says. “If you’ve got a much smaller space, for example you could have a bench where from one view you’re putting all your more saturated colours on one side, and then your paler colours on the other side.”
