Good Nature

A revolutionary, science-based look at the ways nature can improve our lives that will do for the natural world what Tim Spector's Food for Life did for food.

Fifteen years ago, University of Oxford Professor Kathy Willis read a study that radically changed her view of our relationship to the natural world. The study proved that patients recovering in hospital from surgery improved three times faster when they looked out of their windows at trees.

Professor Willis has since dedicated her research to proving this link between the amount of green space in our lives and our better health, mood, and longevity. For the first time ever, Good Nature brings together these recent scientific findings from the past 15 years. Outlining the tangible benefits to our health she and other scientists have discovered, it is full of surprising and practical ways that nature can enhance our lives, such as: did you know that cedar enhances cancer-fighting cells in our immune system? Touching wood makes us feel calmer (the woodier, the knot-ier, the better). Our gut develops a healthier microbiome from being in nature.

A book with applications to everything from which way we walk to work and choosing where our kids should go to school, Good Nature brings the laboratory to our lives – evoking the thrill of scientific discovery – and out into the natural world, making us see and experience it with new eyes.