We Like To Be Around Greenery

In this video presentation by Dr. Richard Harper, Extension Professor, Urban and Community Forestry, UMass Amherst on Trees And Their Environmental Benefits (below), he talks about the tangible health benefits to the environment and ourselves through interacting with green spaces in nature. 

  • "It's engaging because it's restorative."

  • "It reduces our stress."

  • "We have this inherent connection to the natural world."

campus pond

The campus pond in Spring

August 4, 2025

Kaplan [Rachel Kaplan, Ph.D., and Stephen Kaplan, Ph.D. Attention Restoration Theory] did a lot of great work back in the 80s and indeed still well into the 21st century about what's termed Attention Restoration. This is where we're talking about the fact that nature is engaging. It's fascinating, and there's a restorative element to being in nature. 

We see this - even if we don't have a window where we can see outside of our office - people often have what in their office? They often have plants, or they often have pictures of scenery - those sorts of things. 

So again there's a kind of an interconnection interconnectedness between Biophilia [Edward O. Wilson: Biophilia, The Diversity of Life, Naturalist] and Attention Restoration.

(Above are excerpts from the video.)

The Waugh Arboretum: A Landscape Of Serenity

The Waugh Arboretum is a campus wide collection of trees that provides spaces of rest, relaxation, and recreation for our campus community. The Arboretum is accredited by the ArbNet Accreditation Program and is one of only 45 in the world to be recognized at Level IV. It was established in 1944 and was named after the landscape architect, Frank A. Waugh, father of the landscape architecture program on campus, then called the landscape gardening program.