Botanical fatigue

We stumbled across an article the other day that wrote about a term called “botanical blindness”. Originally coined in 1998 this term refers to the tendency for people to become nearly ‘blind’ to the flora around them. If given rapid fire pictures of different plants, animals and unrelated objects humans more accurately identify animals than plants. Even more concerning the study found that brand logos are the most identifiable objects. This has far reaching implications. The inability to identify and appreciate the flora around us leads to less interest in plant conservation. This is seen in the sharp decline in enrollment of botany, plant diversity and ecology classes in public universities and the drying up of public funding for plant science. There is a strong correlation between this phenomenon and the decline in mental health worldwide. This is further illustrated by several prominent studies that link exposure to nature, namely being exposed to plant ecosystems, to decreases in stress hormones and mental health disorders. If you know it or not plants and nature play a huge roll in our happiness. The most amazing and optimistic aspect of these studies is the fact that exposure to “nature” is simply being exposed to any plant environment be it a beautiful oak tree in your front yard or a month long excursion to the amazon. To us this is the perfect marketing for what Bluebird Growers offers. We make beautiful natural landscapes literally in your own backyard and although we do not claim to be able to fix your problems we do strive to make gardens that make you and the ecosystem around us happier! 🙂