Faculty contacts: Jane Mt. Pleasant, Sonja Skelly, Marcia Eames-Sheavly, Lori Bushway
Plants have always played an important role in people’s lives, providing us with food, shelter, medicine, art, and a connection to the natural world. This exciting new area of research focuses on studying the positive impacts that plants and gardening have on the health and well-being of people and communities.
Possible research areas include:
- Benefits of plants on cognitive performance and mood.
- Benefits of gardening activities on physical health and psychological well-being of children, youth, and adults.
- Connections between garden programs and nutrition, physical activity and obesity.
- Assessing the role urban plant environments play in promoting community change and/or economic improvements.
- Using plants as tools to empower and improve individuals, communities, and societies.
Plant and Human Well-Being research involves collaboration with researchers in other disciplines, including human development, program evaluation, psychology, design and environmental analysis, education, nutrition, food science, and other specialties. It uses the qualitative and quantitative mixed-method approaches, and builds on existing efforts in the Department in the areas of garden-based learning and community horticulture.
Our faculty are currently engaged in a range of diverse activities, including exploring gardening as an avenue for easing racial tension, developing garden-based curricula with a multicultural emphasis, studying and communicating how non-traditional audiences can have improved access to gardening and landscape management programs, and exploring how consumers influence horticultural production and service companies' practices and expectations.