Therapeutic landscapes during the COVID-19 pandemic: increased and intensified interactions with nature

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a drastic impact on the course of everyday life for much of the world’s population and many people have experienced an unprecedented increase in anxiety and depression while their access to a range of coping mechanisms has been reduced. For those privileged enough to have nearby and safe access to natural environments, green and blue spaces have become an important enabler of everyday wellbeing. In this paper we explore the role of everyday interactions with nature for the maintenance of wellbeing, during the first and second ‘wave’ of infections in the Netherlands. Based on qualitative interviews with 30 participants in spring/summer and autumn of 2020, we detail how relationships with nature in the local surroundings and in the home qualitatively and effectively changed in response to COVID-19 induced confinement, resulting in the becoming-therapeutic of everyday micro-geographies. Amongst our participants, the conditions of semi-lockdown gave rise to increased interactions with nature, both in their outdoor surroundings and in the home. These increased interactions also led to intensified emotional and sensory experiences with nature and a greater sense of familiarity with their surroundings, which strengthened place-attachments and contributed to an increased sense of wellbeing.

KEYWORDS:

• Therapeutic landscapes
• nature interaction
• COVID-19 pandemic
• wellbeing
• health geography
• green space

Introduction

A psychotherapist offering outdoor therapy is quoted in The Guardian about the pandemic experience: ‘Many of us live in survival mode in towns and cities, but when we immerse ourselves in green space, we remember what makes us feel good’ (Buckingham, 2021). This statement reflects both something of the struggle of our historical present during the coronavirus pandemic, and what has been more or less a collective refuge in nature. Since early 2020 much of the world’s population has lived under varying conditions of ‘lockdown’ due to the spread of COVID-19, which in many cases has entailed restrictions on local, national, and international mobilities, and the closure of workplaces, non-essential shops, schools and universities, as well as indoor and outdoor leisure spaces. As a collective moment of heightened intensity, the global pandemic brought on by the spread of the COVID-19 virus has produced new ways of sensing and intuiting contemporary life. Through restrictions on international travel and the closure of borders, the nation has been reified as the primary locale of the pandemic, where risks are managed, actions crystalize, and impacts land. Simultaneously, the pandemic clearly constitutes a global moment, the year 2020 was a year when we all had to work out what it feels like to ‘be historical’ (Berlant, 2008), to live out a historical present translocally and collectively. The Covid-19 pandemic is in the process of reconfiguring socio-economic, cultural and political relations around the world, and has resulted in a heightened awareness of our individual and shared vulnerabilities: biological, social, financial, and existential (Ho & Madrell, 2020, p. 3), as well as the entanglement of human and ecological health (Zabaniotou, 2020). The pandemic has had a drastic impact on the course of everyday life for much of the world’s population. It has reshaped relations to home and workspaces, neighbourhoods, and nearby green spaces. Government restrictions have impacted on how and when we socialise with others and the meanings of social solidarity and care (Springer, 2020). These changes, alongside the anxiety, stress and worry they have caused, have had an adverse effect on mental health (Marroquín et al., 2020). Restricted mobilities and lockdowns have exacerbated existing inequalities and unproportionally affected society’s most vulnerable (Rose-Redwood et al., 2020), had a negative impact on gendered divides (Manzo & Minello, 2020) and gender-based violence (Mittal & Singh, 2020), just to mention a few of the wide-ranging and multifaceted impacts that are still in the process of unravelling.

Alongside new geographies of risk, death, and personal and collective topographies of loss (Madrell, 2020), the pandemic has also created new (micro-)geographies of healing and respite. Many people across the globe have sought a deepened connection with their natural environments. It is with these emerging therapeutic geographies that this paper is concerned. With the focus on engagements with nature for wellbeing, our paper can be situated in relation to previous research on the healing qualities of green spaces, both in literatures that employ the metaphor of therapeutic landscape (e.g., Milligan & Bingley, 2007; Milligan et al., 2004; Palka, 1999) and a more general focus in human geography upon the therapeutic qualities of green spaces (e.g., Maas, van Dillen, Verheij & Groenewegen, 2009; Lee & Maheswaran, 2011), as well as the considerable literature across other disciplines on the linking of green spaces and health (De Vries et al., 2003).

Reports from around the world have tracked the increased use of greenspaces during the pandemic (Derks et al., 2020; Rousseau & Deschacht, 2020; Venter et al., 2020). Many have turned to ‘nature’ as a source of healing, respite, and comfort during this time of crisis. This ‘theming’ of response to an event has been expressed by Oikkonen (2017) as an ‘affective concentration’. We may further understand this affective concentration around nature interactions via the notion of genre, as articulated in the work of Lauren Berlant (2008). A genre is often understood as a stylistic set of organizing principles that adhere to conventions developed over time, by which one can classify forms of cultural expression. Genre in this sense refers to social action, ways of acting together (Miller, 1994). In a broader sense, genres organize experiential expectations and conventions. For Berlant (2008), a genre emerges as a cluster of promises, a scene of feeling and sensing, which sheds light on a patterned and emotionally invested set of expectations about how to feel, act, and interpret, which embed the subject in their historical present (Duschinsky & Wilson, 2015). The pandemic has seen a number of ‘genres’ emerge which people have reached for to feel comfort and connection, increased engagements with nature being one of them, but also bread-baking, at-home-yoga, hobby crafting, ‘zoom parties’, and adopting a pet. Jumping in and out of these recognisable trends in search of something that feels good is what Berlant terms ‘genre flail’: in times of higher intensity and contradiction, ‘one flails around wanting something other than what it is, but one also fears the disappointment of one’s lack of imagination and trust in the patience and inventiveness of others’ (Berlant & Edelman, 2014, p. 110). We may consider that therapeutic engagements with nature have been elevated as a ‘genre’ particular to the contemporary period of crisis.

In this paper, we explore everyday engagements with nearby green-grey-blue spaces over the course of 2020 in online, in-person, and walk-along interviews with 30 individuals living in the Netherlands, complemented by photographs and video clips submitted by 13 participants. Supported by the qualitative data, we examine these everyday engagements with nearby nature as affective practices that (re-)constitute therapeutic geographies in the context of a global pandemic. These are not geographically specific therapeutic landscapes, or pristine ‘green’ or ‘blue’ spaces, but diverse engagements with nature in the local built environment, that collectively produce what we may term an affective ‘genre’ of ‘healing nature’. The uncoupling of the therapeutic landscape metaphor from geographically defined places has featured in previous studies that emphasise the imagined (e.g., Baer & Gesler, 2004) and mobile (Doughty, 2013; Gatrell, 2013) nature of therapeutic engagements with places, and bodily practices that are ‘place-aware’ but not bound to a static notion of location.

Understanding geographies of wellbeing through the metaphor of ‘therapeutic landscape’

The concept of therapeutic landscape has gained traction in health geographical scholarship since it was first introduced by Wil Gesler in a position paper in 1992 (Gesler, 1992). Therapeutic landscapes are places where ‘physical and built environments, social conditions and human perceptions combine to produce an atmosphere … conducive to healing’ (Gesler, 1996, p. 96). The concept of therapeutic landscape is used to explore practices and experiences of healing, relaxation, restoration, contentment and being at peace, and their material geographies (Andrews, 2019). Therapeutic landscapes may involve organised collective spaces of healing, exemplified by recent examinations of outdoor programmes for military veterans (Havlick et al., 2021), gardening for residents in aged-care facilities (Tsai et al., 2020), urban allotments for refugees (Biglin, 2020), and day-care centres for elderly migrants (Carlsson et al., 2020). They may also be more diffuse and diverse experiences of places, framed by activity, life-stage, or situation, such as walking groups for the elderly (Paddon, 2020), experiences of settlement for international migrants (Klocker et al., 2021), caring practices in funeral homes (Mathijssen, 2021), or even engagements with digital health services (Thompson, 2021). The continuing development of the concept has built on earlier calls to examine the relational dynamics of therapeutic spaces (e.g., Conradson, 2005), acknowledging that no place is intrinsically therapeutic. Rather, opportunities for wellbeing emerge through interactions between a person and a socio-material setting, embroiled within broader cultural and historical geographies of health, healing, and illness. Recent contributions to the literature have highlighted the diversity and contingency of the relations and experiences through which therapeutic effects emerge in particular material contexts, with growing attention to affective, embodied, mobile, and multisensory experiences (Butterfield & Martin, 2016; Straughan, 2012) and more-than-human relations (Gorman, 2019). As well as the diverse set of everyday geographies that are important for people’s wellbeing, beyond places that are historically and explicitly associated with health and healing (Mossabir et al., 2021).

However, the sub-set of the therapeutic landscape literature that is most relevant to this paper has focused on what can be broadly termed ‘natural environments’. These studies have examined the relationship between engagements with green nature in various forms (e.g., parks, gardens, woodland, wilderness spaces) and experiences of health and healing (Milligan & Bingley, 2007; Milligan et al., 2004; Palka, 1999). More recently, this literature has also included a focus on the role of ‘blue spaces’ in facilitating experiences of wellbeing, encompassing a variety of environments that feature water, from urban canals and fountains, to river, lake, and coastal landscapes (Foley & Kistemann, 2015; Bell et al., 2018; Foley et al. 2019; Wheaton et al., 2021; Olive & Wheaton, 2020). The therapeutic potential of engagements with natural environments is associated with ‘a range of physically and mentally rejuvenating activities which they encourage, meeting a diversity of needs and preferences of people who engage with them’ (Mossabir et al., 2021, p. 19). In examinations of wellbeing in relation to outdoor green and blue spaces, the scale, characteristics, and functions of these spaces remain diverse across the literature. The healing green and blue may be encountered in engagements with spaces that range from a small potted plant, or a water feature, to vast forests and oceans (Mossabir et al., 2021). The experiences and activities through which wellbeing is produced in green and blue spaces also vary from passive contemplation to a range of physical activities such as gardening, walking, swimming, or surfing. However, ‘therapeutic materialities come in many shades’ (Bell et al., 2018, p. 124) and the ‘”palettic” understanding of therapeutic landscapes’ (ibid.) has been both challenged (e.g., Brown,2017) and supplemented, for example, by the greys and browns of built environments, communal gardens and plots (Pitt, 2014; Finlay et al., 2015), white wilderness spaces (Bell et al., 2018; Brooke & Williams, 2020), and the traditional ‘sand therapy’ of the Uyghur people in Xinjiang, China (Wang et al., 2018). However, we agree with Bell et al. (2018, pp. 124–5) that, rather than framing landscapes through colour, ‘a shift towards palettic “sensescapes” might better equip researchers to engage with corporeal contingency and embodied difference’.

At the time of writing, research that explicitly applies a therapeutic landscape framework to analyze impacts of the pandemic on therapeutic geographies is slowly beginning to emerge. This nascent literature has emphasized the role of natural environments in helping people to cope with and adapt to the circumstances of the pandemic. Humberstone (2021) shares an intimate autoethnographic exploration of nature-based activity as an older person during the pandemic, and Guzmán et al. (2020) share the findings that elderly participants purposefully engaged with nature in diverse ways that boosted their social, mental, and physical wellbeing. Jellard and Bell (2021) and Wheaton et al. (2021) show that restrictions placed on water sports have had a significant impact on coastal communities, exposing and amplifying the connections people have to these landscapes. Marsh et al. (2021) examine the functions of the garden as a refuge during the COVID-19 pandemic, in findings that resonate with our own, they show that this period heightened emotional and sensory experiences of gardening, with greater attunements and connection to nature resulting.

Researching everyday therapeutic landscapes during the pandemic

This article combines the results of two periods of qualitative data collection carried out in the Netherlands during 2020, with the goal of examining the role of engagements with nearby green and blue spaces during the pandemic. Qualitative interviews were carried out with two groups: long-term residents, and relative newcomers. The latter group referred, in this case, to international students. In total, 30 individuals resident in the Netherlands shared their experiences during one joint and 29 individual interviews conducted in spring/summer and autumn of 2020.

The first round of data collection consisted of semi-structured interviews with 15 native or long-term Dutch residents over videoconferencing, carried out (by the third author) in May and June 2020. Closely following the first lockdown, which had been introduced on 15 March but started to be eased by mid-May. Conducting the interviews online respected social distancing measures and restrictions on unnecessary travel and enabled us to recruit participants from across the country, which may have otherwise posed a logistical challenge during this period. The participants were adults between 23 and 67, five identified as men and ten as women. The participants were recruited through the extended professional and social networks of the researchers. Invitation emails were sent out within the university and to friends, relatives, and neighbours. This resulted in a participant group that was relatively diverse in terms of age and gender, but not a socio-economically diverse group. All participants were university educated and able to work from home, their job titles included ICT consultant, lecturer, research scientist, and software consultant. All but two of the participants were born and raised in the Netherlands, two were migrants from non-European countries. They lived across the centre (Utrecht), east (Wageningen, Ede, Arnhem) and north (Groningen) of the country. The majority of the participants had access to some form of greenspace – parks, woodlands, or open fields – within walking distance of the home. However, three participants did not have extensive greenspace in their immediate neighbourhoods, such as parkland to walk in, but could access such an environment in less than 30 minutes by foot, bike or car. After the interview, the participants were invited to send us annotated photos/videos based on their interactions with nature, and 13 participants sent us a total of 59 contributions.

The second round of interviews was carried out in October and November 2020. By this time the Netherlands was under its second semi-lockdown since September, with stricter measures, such as social distancing and asking people to work from home and limit their domestic mobilities, introduced in mid-October. In these interviews we wanted to explore the impact of the pandemic on the international student population at our own institution, Wageningen University, a research university located in a small historic town in the province of Gelderland, in the Netherlands. International students were a relatively vulnerable group during the pandemic, experiencing the conditions of lockdown from the confines of student accommodation in an unfamiliar country far from the support of family and friends. Studies had started to confirm what we witnessed ourselves, that the pandemic was negatively impacting on students’ mental health, with an increase in experiences of anxiety and depression (Li et al., 2021), and international students are often unlikely to seek or access support (Boafo-Arthur & Boafo-Arthur, 2016). We sought to understand how students from different cultural backgrounds were interacting with nearby natural environments, and how these engagements connected to the maintenance of wellbeing. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 15 full-time international students by the second author. The participants studied on a range of different programmes and all lived in student accommodation on, or close to, campus. According to 2019 figures, Wageningen University has an international student population just shy of 3,000, in a total student body of around 12,500. As the participants were located on campus and university policy allowed for in-person meetings at the time of the interviews, fourteen interviews were carried out face-to-face either while seated somewhere on campus (8) or while walking in a nearby blue-green space chosen by the participant (6), and one interview was carried out online at the request of the participant. The participants were between the ages of 23 and 35, 11 identified as women, three as men, and one as non-binary. When not attending university, their countries of residence were Surinam, India, China, Spain, Mexico, United Kingdom, Indonesia, Italy, Mozambique, Ghana, and the United States.

The results presented below are based on a thematic analysis carried out by the first author (who also supervised the data collection) of all interview transcripts across the two cohorts, as well as the photographs/videos. The aims of both rounds of data collection were to explore a) how the participants’ interactions with nature had been affected by the circumstances of the pandemic, and b) the role that nature interactions played in their everyday pursuit and maintenance of wellbeing. Although not a formal ‘triangulation’ of method, the data spans online and in-person (seated and mobile) interviews, with the added depth of insight offered by participant-generated data of annotated photographs and videos. The go-along interviews further helped to bring to the fore participants’ multi-sensory experiences. Exploring nature interaction across the experiences of native/long-term residents and newcomers/temporary residents, aimed at producing insights into the diversity of experiences and practices across groups who enjoyed different levels of familiarity and ‘rootedness’ locally, as ‘sense of place’ has underpinned the therapeutic landscape concept (Eyles & Williams, 2008). The weaker place attachment is only one aspect of several that makes the second group relatively more vulnerable to mental health impacts of lockdown, at least in objective terms. However, the differences between the groups were always viewed with a soft lens, and hard comparison was never the goal. There are strong similarities in how the participants across the two groups turned to nature for restoration and comfort, and as a space for social contact. Thus, across the data, we see the evidence of an ‘affective concentration’ (Oikkonen, 2017) around the notion of nature as healing. Some self-selection bias is undoubtedly at play here, as individuals with positive experiences of nature interaction during lockdown may be more likely to participate in this research. However, the interviews found that the participants had varied levels of interest and engagement with nature prior to the pandemic.

The first round of data collection was carried out during late spring and summer, when it is particularly pleasant to be outside, and this undoubtedly also had some impact on the data, particularly the photographs, many which feature flowers in bloom. However, the interviews focused on experiences of nature during and since the first lockdown which began in March, to understand how nature interactions had been impacted from the beginning of the pandemic. It should be noted that the interviews with the second group, which took place in autumn, also asked questions about their experience of the first lockdown during the spring. The results across both groups highlight the significance of nature experiences during the first lockdown between early March and early May 2020, when uncertainties and anxieties about the virus and the future were at a peak for many.

Below we present the findings, which show the becoming-therapeutic of participants’ everyday interactions with nature in its diverse forms. Detailing increased and intensified interactions with nature in their surroundings, including their homes.

Increased and intensified interactions with nature

Reports from across the globe have noted an increase in recreational use of green spaces over the past year (Derks et al., 2020; Rousseau & Deschacht, 2020; Venter et al., 2020), reflecting the therapeutic value of contact with nature for mitigating the negative mental health impact of COVID-19 (Soga & Gaston, 2020). The COVID-19 pandemic has changed people’s ability to recreate in public green spaces (Dzhambov et al., 2021), and walking and cycling in nearby natural environments constituted a key aspect of how our participants engaged in ‘self-care’ during lockdown, most spending more time exploring their local green and blue spaces than they normally would, which for many resulted in intensified emotional and sensory experiences in and of nature, as we will discuss further below.

Working-from-home orders led to an increase in screen time for both employees and students, with all meetings and lectures taking place online, and words like ‘zoom-fatigue’ and being a ‘zoombie’ entering common parlance to describe new sedentary states of compromised wellbeing (Petriglieri, 2020). In response, many participants shared that getting outside and moving one’s body felt more important than previously for their physical and mental wellbeing. Most of our participants reported seeking out nearby natural environments more often than before the pandemic, the few who answered that there had been no change were already frequent nature-goers before the pandemic and had kept up their previous level of outdoor recreation. Our participants shared a range of ‘outdoor’ experiences, such as practising yoga in a park, or on a riverbank, swimming in the river, jogging around the fields behind campus, or going for long walks in their local (green) surroundings. Walking, and to a lesser degree cycling, offered new ways and settings for social interaction with partners, family and friends, while walking or cycling alone offered space for relaxation, self-communion, and a deeper connection to the local area and to nature.

For many this meant the creation of new outdoor mobilities, and for some participants new routines emerged, such as replacing the daily commute with a walk together with a partner also working from home:

‘.every morning we ‘walk to work’ ((makes air quotes)) so we still have some sort of traveling time and a moment to wake up’ (female native resident, 3 June 2020).

Green spaces also functioned as spaces to connect with others in new ways, illustrated by, for example, a video clip of a family gathering in the park, socially distanced, or photos of outdoor yoga lessons. Some shared that meeting a friend for a walk facilitated for deeper one-on-one conversations, or going for lone walks provided opportunities for a healing sense of solitude and deep pondering. For our participants, contact with nature, from a green view, to caring for houseplants, to long walks in the forest, brought feelings of being at ease, relaxation, and rejuvenation. It became easier to deal with stress and worry, to clear the mind, or to ponder important questions, and for some it served as a source of inspiration and creativity. Across the interviews, and the annotated photographs and videos, it became clear that their relationships to green spaces had become more frequent as well as intensified in terms of the connection they felt to their surroundings, and to nature more broadly.

Nature as refuge and source of comfort in the early pandemic

Many participants spoke of the early months of the pandemic as particularly difficult, they felt a heightened sense of anxiety and worry caused especially by all the uncertainties around the virus at that time. The sudden disruption of work and social routines and the isolation, as well as the relentlessness of the news cycles devoted to the spread of the disease and the growing death toll, all combined to negatively impact participants’ sense of wellbeing:

‘it was of course not just home-working, but also the anxiety that something might happen to you, or your parents, and what was happening in the country and in the world, so that kept me really preoccupied’ (female native resident, 16 June 2020)

‘I was almost every day checking the number of infected cases around the world [and I became] a bit obsessed with checking the numbers and washing my hands’ (female international student from Spain, 6 November 2020)

Green spaces, especially, were experienced as a refuge and space to deal with difficult experiences. Spaces where they could disconnect from private and worldly affairs:

On the one hand you were overwhelmed with the news of the pandemic, and then you go outside, there you notice nothing of what’s happening. I had discovered this beautiful woodland, and that gave me so much peace (male native resident, 4 June 2020)

It felt like a relief to see that everything just carried on, whatever is happening in our strange human world. We struggle with corona, but it doesn’t matter to nature, it’s more likely good for nature, less pollution, less air traffic, and so on (female native resident, 10 June 2020)

The widespread seeking of solace in nature sheds light on the emotional and psychological challenges of living through our historical present while maintaining a sense of wellbeing. We look to nature to come through on its promise to restore us, and in its perpetuity of life, we hope we will find our own strength to survive. The symbolism of ‘eternal nature’ as a source of existential comfort was a strong theme across the interviews. The feeling that nature ‘carries on’, and that in nature the troubles of humanity can be temporarily cast off, were important aspects of what made nature contact particularly valuable for wellbeing during the past year:

‘it feels different, but I’m not sure exactly what it is, at least in the beginning when everything was so quiet. The air was still, and … nature was so abundant and beautiful, I felt that, yeah, and still do’ (female native resident, 3 June 2020).

Interaction with nature both indoors and outdoors helped to compensate for a lack of social interaction and feelings of isolation and afforded for most a sense of joy in the moment, a refuge from other troubles and feelings. In different ways, all the participants expressed that ‘nature makes me happy’:

It sounds a bit poetic maybe, but yeah, freeing, yeah, [nature] makes me very happy somehow ((laughs)) (female native resident, 10 June 2020)

Sometimes I feel a bit down from the lack of social contact, then I just force myself to go to the woodland, because I know that it will make me feel better, nature just makes me really happy, I love to see things grow, and I think green has a good affect on me (female native resident, 2 June 2020)

More frequent engagement with nature in its various guises – including, as we discuss below, more attention to houseplants and flowers and views from work and study places – made for a qualitatively changed relationship to ‘nature’ at large, but also led to a (renewed) sense of appreciation for their surroundings.

Becoming intimately familiar with the surroundings

More opportunities to explore the area surrounding one’s home led participants to familiarise themselves with their neighbourhoods more generally in new and more intimate ways. Many of the long-term residents remarked on this sense of re-discovery of the local:

‘I’ve taken long walks [in the neighbourhood] with my daughter and have noticed things that I hadn’t noticed before in the 25 years I’ve lived here’ (male native resident, 4 June 2020).

‘Because we’ve started to work from home, I had more time to go walking in the area around my flat, and in that way I have become more familiar with the neighbourhood. So, I now know the village well but also the forest around it because I’ve indeed been walking a lot’ (female native resident, 10 June 2020).

For many participants, the ‘localness’ of their everyday lives during the pandemic facilitated for a deeper connection with their surroundings. The majority of our participants enjoyed the advantage of living in relatively ‘green’ neighbourhoods, and this was a particular focus for a new sense of gratitude and appreciation:

‘Actually, I didn’t value where I live enough, I think now, when I look back on it’ (female native resident, 16 June 2020)

‘I especially value the garden […] imagine if we had still lived in the city, I would have found that really oppressive’ (male native resident, 24 June 2020)

‘it’s more of an awareness of “oh yes, we have this around the corner”, you don’t need to go far to find a super pretty place, and then you value it more, instead of taking it for granted (female native resident, 3 June 2020)

This sense of appreciation for the green environment was not limited to long-term residents, but was also particularly noted among the international students, many of whom mentioned the rurality of the university campus and the access to nature as things they were grateful for during the lockdown:

“During the quarantine, I’m so grateful for nature and living here. I was super grateful for everything around us.” (female international student from the UK, 2 November 2020)

“It’s really good during corona times to be here, you can still go out. Imagine I’m in Amsterdam … I might be very depressed. Here it’s really spacious and I can enjoy nature’ (female international student from Italy, 27 October 2020)

Participants across the groups mentioned increased attention to nearby nature, noticing new things, the small changes of the seasons, nurturing place-attachment through becoming intimately familiar with their surroundings:

‘also the really small things that you see in nature, for example, the little pond with frogs that I’d never seen before, that’s fun. One day I noticed it, and then the following day I went to see if the frog spawn was still there, and things like that. Just really small things. Once, I spotted an overgrown path, and yeah, a feeling of wonder’ (female native resident, 10 June 2020)

Since we frequently go for walks we know the birds in the area, so we have made up special names for them. For example, we always see one bird snipping off the grass in the water so that the water’s edge is clear, so we call him the concierge. So, then we check how far the concierge has got with his task that day, and how much work he has to do. So, we check in with nature ((laughs)). You notice the changes, first you see two lambs, then suddenly twenty lambs, then the lambs are grown up, it becomes part of walking that you notice these things (female native resident, 16 June 2020).

Whereas none of the Dutch natives mentioned feelings of safety (or lack thereof), several of the female international students mentioned appreciating feeling safe in green space for the first time:

I always feel very grateful when I go out in The Netherlands because this is something that I’m not used to do alone back home […] I really enjoyed the green in the Netherlands and … I associate the green with like, okay, it’s safe, it’s pure, it’s the smell of nature (female international student from Mozambique, 2 November 2020)

What further set the group of international students apart from the other participants was that memories and imagined mobilities (Gastaldo et al., 2004) had a stronger significance in their therapeutic landscape experiences. For example, a Chinese student shared that she strolls often in a nearby woodland, where what made her feel good was partly that it reminded her of home and the continuity made it easier to adjust to her new environment:

“I live in an area surrounded by woods and my family always go there during the weekend. When I’m here in Wageningen, I also want to spend some time alone in the woods.” (female international student from China, 15 November 2020)

For others, seeing familiar trees or plants brought a sense of home and feeling of connection with the landscape, and seeing Dutch children brought warm thoughts of a child at home. Biglin’s (2020) work on an urban gardening initiative for refugees in the UK, similarly emphasised the role of sensory nostalgia in the making-therapeutic of the allotment, she found that sensory stimuli, specifically familiar smells and scents, can trigger memories.

Sensory therapeutic experiences

Nearby green spaces are sensory therapeutic landscapes where multisensory experiences of sounds, colours, scents and textures facilitated moments of mindful presence. Numerous types of nature sounds werenoted by participants, including birds chirping, leaves rustling in a light breeze, water flowing and frogs croaking, and cows mooing. Previous studies have shown that natural sounds, most commonly birdsong, enhances restorative perception, stress and mood recovery, and physiological health (Alvarsson, Wiens & Nilsson, 2010; Ratcliffe et al., 2013):

‘I’m passionate about bird-watching. Whenever I hear birds chirping, it makes me feel relaxed, it’s like lifting a burden off my shoulders’ (female international student from China, 28 October 2020)

‘I’m from Mexico, it’s not that accessible to go to a green area, and I discovered [here] that I really enjoy hearing the birds singing. The birds chirping, the leaf and the wind. The sounds I think! It’s soothing’ (female international student from Mexico, 30 October 2020)

Others reflected on their tactile experience with grass and wind while moving in green spaces. Touch plays a crucial part in creating bonds but the importance of tactile sensation has often been neglected in human-nature interaction (Franco et al., 2017). Touch facilitated intimate connection with nature and the earth, and a sense of being ‘grounded’ that reverberated through the body, in experiences such as walking barefoot on grass or soil, and lying or rolling in the grass, or feeling the wind on one’s face:

‘I like walking on top of the leaves when they’re on the ground, I like walking on top of them. I like the pathway without cement, the ground itself it’s already nice to walk on, it’s softer’ (female international student from Mexico, 30 October 2020)

‘[cycling] does give me a sense of healing, it does. It’s because of the wind, I like the wind. When you bike, it’s cold and especially at night, it’s really comforting, it emptied my mind, it’s really comforting me’ (female international student from Surinam, 22 October 2020).

Some participants described the role of bodily movement as giving them a sense of wellbeing that was not confined to the physicality of the body but was felt resonating emotionally: one participant described the feeling of stretching her arms and hearing a cracking sound in her joints and back, which made her feel lighter physically while emotionally experiencing a sense of letting go. Another participant describes the connection they sensed between their physical and spiritual well-being:

‘I feel really light like I was not carrying everything that comes with being myself I think, all those tasks that I had to do, everything I would just leave it somewhere else. I would just be with me and my body and my spirit. I feel really light, carrying my body across the grass you know’ (non-binary international student from India, 15 November 2020).

The photographs the participants sent us illustrated the embodied, sensory and emotional immersion in nature that contributed to the becoming-therapeutic of their surroundings. The photographs featured a range of green and blue vistas, as expected, but also many photographs that illustrated the intimate immersion and multisensory engagement with nature, this is exemplified by Figure 1 below with its accompanying annotation. The photographs featured, for example, the texture of an overgrown path, a snail after the rain, close-ups of flowers, lady birds, grubs, a trail of ants, shadow play on leaves, fields and sky from a low vantage point in the midst of wildflowers, and a view from below of a tree crown sent with the words ‘I think sometimes that trees are so big, so that we remember how small we actually are’, another shot of ladybirds on a thistle flower was annotated with the words:

‘today I thought about how being outdoors is not just about emptying your mind, but about taking in all kinds of impressions. With all this green, the scents and flavours, you can’t get stuck in your problems, you’re naturally distracted” (female native resident, 5 June 2020).

We also received several recordings of bird song. The role of sensory stimuli in therapeutic landscape experiences has started to gain attention, such as in Gorman’s (2017) work on smellscapes, and Kaley et al. (2019) on soundscapes, but remains overall understudied. There is much scope for further research on the role of the different senses, and their interaction, in anticipations, imaginations, and expectations of a therapeutic space (Gorman, 2017), and how sensory experiences actively influence the ways in which places are meaningful for wellbeing.

Figure 1. “That light/shadow play again! Hard to photograph. Here the leaves also had different colours” (photo by female native resident, June 2020).

Nature in the home

Not only relationships to outdoor public green spaces intensified, but also relationships to indoor green, illustrated by a participant photograph and annotation shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. ‘We separate ourselves from nature in our houses, but we can bring her beauty inside. So much enjoyment from even just a small flower’ (photo by female native resident, June, 2020).

Others described how their attention and interest in flowers and plants grew during lockdown and the wellbeing benefits they felt from being surrounded by the colours and the feeling of connection to their houseplants. These are findings that resonate with a number of reports that highlight the correlation between indoor plants and positive emotional wellbeing during the COVID-19 confinement (e.g., Pérez-Urrestarazu et al., 2021). Several had taken advantage of being able to cheaply order flowers and plants direct from struggling growers following the first lockdown, one participant described having gone from having three succulents to over 20 potted plants, another had amassed 30 potted plants in his student dorm, another had filled her room with tulips:

‘I bought lots of flowers to ease my depression, the more colourful the better because when I saw them, I felt passionate … I know at least something is alive in my confined place except for myself [and it] made me feel happier and that I was not alone, I had their company’ (female international student from China, 2 November 2020)

These participants expressed an experience of comfort from nurturing a connection to their plant companions, ‘who are also living, breathing, possibly working, grieving, and connecting in times like this’ (Xie, 2020, unpaginated). This kind of anthropomorphising of plants, Biglin (2020) argues, can be a reminder to nurture the self.

Conclusion

Emerging research evidence shows that the pandemic has been detrimental for mental health and emotional wellbeing (Pan et al., 2021). Many people have experienced an unprecedented increase in stress and anxiety while their access to a range of coping mechanisms has been reduced. During this time, a wealth of media coverage and an emerging scholarly literature is showing that during the pandemic, ‘people have visited and noticed nature more’ (Richardson & Hamlin, 2021). A growing number of studies show that where possible, people have sought out green and blue spaces, such as parks, public gardens, rural and coastal areas to help cope with the increased stress and worry caused by the uncertainties and social isolation of the pandemic (Pouso et al., 2020; Shah et al., 2021; Soga & Gaston, 2020; Venter et al., 2020).

Our findings contribute to this growing literature by highlighting spatial experiences of seeking refuge and restoration, creation of new social spaces, changing perceptions and valorisations of nearby natural environments, as well as plants and flowers in the home, which has resulted in the creation of therapeutic everyday micro-geographies that indicate an intensification of practices and emotional investments in nature in response to the pandemic. Interactions with nature offered refuge and respite from a constant stream of covid-related news and inspired through multisensory immersion feelings of relaxation and joy. Thus, our findings contribute to the body of work that illustrates the different ways that ‘natural environments’ are therapeutic landscapes that foster wellbeing through material and symbolic interactions.

For our participants, increased and intensified engagements with nature in its various expressions, from intimate relations with houseplants and flowers, to walking and cycling in open landscapes, woodlands, or riverscapes, facilitated for strengthened place-attachments and (renewed) appreciation for their surroundings, whether they were long-term residents or newcomers. While outdoor recreation for most felt close-at-hand and familiar, their relationships with nearby nature qualitatively and effectively changed in response to COVID-19 induced confinement, resulting in the becoming-therapeutic of their everyday local surroundings. We found that sensory and emotional experiences heightened feelings of connection with nature, both outdoors and in the home, and facilitated for positive impacts on wellbeing and mental health. Similarly with others (e.g., Marsh et al., 2021), we found that the early period of the pandemic intensified those sensory and emotional experiences of nature. During this period, local green and blue landscapes functioned as refuges for people and helped them cope with and adapt to the unfamiliar and highly stressful circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Increased and intensified contact with nature, we suggest, has emerged as an affective genre (Berlant, 2008) of the pandemic. Did it have to take a pandemic for people to see the value of the nature that surrounds them, as Naomi (2020) asks? Perhaps, but our turn to nature can also be seen as a falling back on a deep-seated historical and cultural connection between health and the natural environment, a haven in times of turmoil. This includes visiting outdoor green-blue spaces, as well as renewed forms of ‘transcorporeal, interconnected and co-created existence’ between humans and the plants in their homes (Xie, 2020). We have seen intensified intimacies between humans and nature reflected in worldwide reports of increased use and crowding of green spaces, and the prominence of nature’s value for wellbeing in all manner of conversations: ‘green spaces have become one of the only sources of resilience amidst the coronavirus pandemic, in part because of their positive effects on psychological, physical and social cohesion and spiritual wellness’ (Geng et al., 2020, p. 553).

As the global COVID-19 pandemic continues to evolve, and as societies around the world continue to grapple with its effects, it is of increasing importance to gain ever improved understanding of the diverse spaces, practices and relations that support wellbeing, and what this means for sustainable design of public outdoor spaces as we emerge from this crisis, and not least in dealing with the unfolding repercussions of the pandemic on wellbeing and mental health (Taquet et al., 2021). The scholarship on therapeutic landscapes has much to contribute to this effort in its connection of wellbeing to the physical and built environments that sustain life in its full spectrum of social, cultural, economic, spiritual, cognitive, emotional physiological, and symbolic processes (Wheaton et al., 2021) and to which we have now turned with heightened awareness of the importance and precarity of our socio-ecological relationships.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.