Oxford Professor Kathy Willis spent her career studying fossilised plants and plant matter -
but it wasn't until she was contributing to an international project looking for the societal
benefits of plants that she stumbled across a study that radically changed the way she viewed
the natural world. The study showed that patients recovering from surgery improved faster just
by looking at trees - that the benefit comes from our sensory experience of plants not just
from environmental improvements. Dr Willis has since embarked on a process of discovery to
find the research that has shown time and time again that there is a causal link between the
amount of greenspace and trees in our lives and better health outcomes. Consulting plant
scientists and biologists medical practitioners and psychiatrists city-planners and
government health authorities she builds an evidence-base that can and should transform how
we design and inhabit our environments. Focusing on the four senses of sight smell hearing
and touch as well as how we should organise our homes our time outdoors and our medical
routines to reap the benefits of all this new research Good Nature brings us into the
laboratory - evoking the thrill of scientific discovery - and out again into the natural world
making us see and experience it with new eyes.
