Do Trees Reduce Stress?

Trees have many well known benefits - cleaning water, reducing flooding, production of fruit and nuts, production of timber, stabilization of climate.  However, most people have not heard of the research regarding trees and psychology.

Neighborhoods with more trees have lower crime rates.  In research conducted by Sullivan and Kuo in housing projects in Chicago, it was found that buildings with trees had objectively higher interaction between residents within the community.  They theorized that this was due to trees making outdoor spaces more inviting for people, allowing neighbors to get to know each other better.  This was associated with less violence.  "The researchers found fewer reports of physical violence in homes that had trees outside the buildings" according the University of Illinois (link below).  

A treeless building of the Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago prior to demolition (from Wikipedia, see below for attribution).

Trees are also well known to increase property value.  For homeowners wanting to make their neighborhood more inviting (and their property more valuable), planting trees can be a low cost investment with continuing returns.  This is also true of landowners with rental properties.

Perhaps the largest obstacle to planting trees on residential property is the belief, previously well founded, that trees are expensive to care for during periods of drought, difficult to plant, and require groundskeepers or lawn care contractors.  While this perhaps was once true, the Groasis Waterboxx has changed much of that.  The Groasis Waterboxx is a device that allows small, inexpensive, bare root trees to be planted for minimal cost.  These trees grow much faster than larger, root bound store bought trees.  The Waterboxx, filled only at tree planting with water, refills itself from both rain (when available) and daily dew.  This water is slowly released to the roots of the growing tree, until the tree has a growth spurt after reaching deeper water.  The Waterboxx is then removed, and the tree is resistant to further droughts.  The Waterboxx can be reused for other trees.  No care is needed after the initial planting of the tree - no groundskeepers or lawn care workers must be paid.

The Groasis Waterboxx

Trees change the character of neighborhoods and properties.  The Groasis Waterboxx offers an inexpensive and reusable means of establishing long-lived trees on private or public property.  The Waterboxx can be purchased in the United States from Dew Harvest LLC.

If you are associated with a civic organization and are interested in the Waterboxx, please contact us here. We would love to hear your comments below - to leave one, please click on "Comments".

Sources:

http://permanent.access.gpo.gov/lps2091/tb4.htm

http://lhhl.illinois.edu/media/thepoweroftrees.htm

Robert Taylor Homes: By Kaffeeringe.de at en.wikipedia [CC BY-SA 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], from Wikimedia Commons