Paying attention to nature helps reduce stress and anxiety. Here we suggest some simple activities that engage your senses and help to notice nature more.

Skywatching

Find somewhere comfortable to sit or lie down with the sun behind you. Choose a point in the sky to focus on and let the clouds float past your view.

Sound Walk

We often take for granted how important sound is in our lives and how the sounds we’re subjected to on a daily basis, affect our concentration levels and the way we process information, but also generally how they affect our mood. We have preferences on our favourite music, and choose to listen only to what we enjoy. Music in its simplistic form is just sound waves and we all have our own emotional connections to sound.
On our sound walk we’ll help show you ways of tuning into your landscape, to better understand what sounds fill your day with positive reinforcement but to also identify sounds that can unknowingly trigger or fuel your anxieties. The joy of this exploration of sound is that we all have our own preferences, so take a listen to the soundscape below, where you can hear birds, wind, rain and more but there’s another element in this track that’s equally important to us. Can you identify what that is?

Prescribing Nature

The idea of ‘prescribing nature’ for a variety of health conditions is gaining popularity and it has been suggested that 2 hours a week is the appropriate ‘dose’.

Bringing nature into our lives

We can introduce a bit more of nature into the places where we live, work and play so that it’s easy to feel the benefits.

In the home

• Plants help to create a healthy atmosphere and brighten up a room. Succulents are easy to care for, needing a bit of sunlight and an occasional watering. Spider plants are known to cleanse the air and are another easy to look after plant. Try ferns, ivy and grasses - they can be quite eye-catching.

• Natural materials - choosing furniture and flooring made from natural materials is an easy way to bring more nature into buildings. There are many materials to choose from, including rattan, wood, stone, slate, cotton, wool and bamboo

• Colour and patterns - many paint and furnishing colours and patterns are inspired by nature. Try a botanical themed wallpaper, tiles in honeycomb shapes or cushions with your favourite animals. Posters and images of natural landscapes, plants and animals are a good way to add elements of nature

• Smell - bring in the scent of nature with flowers or try using beeswax candles and essential oils such as bergamot or rose

• Sound - opening a window to listen to birdsong or focusing on the sound of rain can be soothing. Try different sounds to find your favourites

• Taste - use local natural ingredients to make tasty and nourishing meals, for instance apple and blackberry crumble. Maybe grow some herbs on a windowsill, patio or balcony.

Outdoors

Wildlife has the same basic needs as humans to survive - food, water, shelter and the ability to move around. With a few tweaks, you can encourage more nature into your outdoor space, whatever the size.

Food can be provided by growing plants that different species of wildlife feed on, e.g. foxgloves for bumblebees or ivy that provides berries for blackbirds, or buying food to put out in the garden, for instance for birds, hedgehogs and insects.

Water is life and one of the best ways to attract wildlife to your outdoor space. Depending on the space available, a pond with sloping sides, a marshy area or a shallow bowl with pebbles and water will all support many different species and be a pleasure to watch.

Shelter can be created by growing shrubs and small trees, ivy and other climbers and by providing ground cover by letting grass grow a little longer and not cutting back plant stems over winter. You can also create piles of logs and stones in different corners, letting plants grow taller in these areas. In addition, you can install bird and bat boxes, mini beast hotels and hedgehog homes. A compost heap is great shelter for many animals. If you’re lucky, you might find a slow worm or even grass snake.

Moving around safely outdoors is vital. As well as the options for providing shelter outlined above, you can create holes in your fence to allow small mammals such as hedgehogs to come and go. Hedgerows provide a highway for many animals to be able to move around and have many other wildlife benefits too, for instance berries, flowers and nesting sites.