Why we should all head to the park – the greener the better

The last photograph I have of a friend was taken a few days before her death, when she had mounted a brief escape from the drudgery of hospital life and come to London, possibly knowing it would be her last visit. We went to the pub, we went for a curry, we went and had manicures. And we also went to the park, where I snapped her, sitting on a deckchair, grinning in a break as the bowlers from the local Sunday cricket teams switched ends.

I don’t remember what we talked about, but I do remember we were cheerful. A week later she was gone

The park was London Fields, once described by the capital’s premier occult historian, Iain Sinclair, as “a dog patch with a closed lido”, before it was gussied up to make a more picturesque setting for “improvised picnics, weekend parties of wine bottles, Belgian lagers and excited chatter”. I don’t remember what we talked about (can I be honest? Knowing my pal, it might have been fit cricketers’ arses), but I do remember we were cheerful, even though there were lots of reasons not to be. A week later she was gone.

Perhaps instinct took us there. A new study published in People and Nature, a journal of the British Ecological Society, suggests that “estimated happiness” increases when humanity goes to the park – and the greener the park, the greater the happiness. Admittedly, the instrument that tells us this is called the Hedonometer – not, sadly, a machine from Woody Allen’s Sleeper, but a way of analysing large numbers of tweets. Park tweeters, it seems, are more contented tweeters. You might point out that you don’t tweet from the park, or that when you do, you engage in furious rows about how to rank Pet Shop Boys albums or get Marmite out of a jar, and you would be correct. However, the Hedonometer has, apparently, captured something.

The third objection might run along the lines of “No shit, Sherlock”. For sitting in the park is not only pleasant but also clearly better for us than slogging up and down a busy shopping street or cramming ourselves on to public transport during rush hour. We know that nature helps both body and mind; books such as Emma Mitchell’s excellent The Wild Remedy and Helen Macdonald’s prizewinning H is for Hawk elaborate stylishly the link between mental health and the ability to open ourselves up in open spaces.

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And nor must the benefits be confined to those within striking distance of proper countryside. This year, Finsbury Park in London celebrates 150 years of life – and last month historian Hugh Hayes, writing about its origins, reminded us that it was established following a campaign of nearly 20 years to bring a green space to locals of limited means in need of one.

Last year environmental historian Jessica J Lee set up The Willowherb Review to provide a creative space for nature writing by writers of colour; its most recent issue is a celebration of Epping Forest, on the north-east borders of London. When I interviewed her, I didn’t know what willowherb was – Lee pointed some out. Tall, purple, sort of stringy, it is, as the review notes, “a plant that thrives on disturbed ground. Its seeds do well when transported to new and difficult terrain, so some – not us – may call it a weed.”

I also transported myself to new, though not difficult, terrain last year: a patch in the Republic of Ireland. My garden field boasts lots and lots of willowherb, as well as thistles and what looks like a million varieties of coarse grass. Sometimes, if you are a townie blow-in, living in the countryside seems to be all about keeping what’s outside from getting in: damp, quite often, which is why there are mushrooms growing inside my kitchen door; a pair of bullocks who strayed through a gap in the fence and suddenly appeared outside the window when we were having dinner. The other day, I shooed a sheep off a road back to its flock and felt like a doughty pioneer; at other moments, I can’t believe a pint of milk and a scratch-card are a five-mile drive away.

But I’m much happier. Is it freedom from the exhaustion of a vast city, or merely novelty? Will I, as the Stewart Lee sketch suggests, soon be writing begging letters to friends, imploring them to bring cocaine? (More likely to be copies of the Islington Gazette and a Charlotte Tilbury lipstick – though previous experience of writing about country life leads me to reassure my new compatriots that I do understand Charlotte Tilbury products are available here – just not very near me). Either way, I’ll take it. And I don’t need a Hedonometer to confirm.

Alex Clark writes for the Guardian and the Observer

Topics

Health

Opinion

Green space

Rural affairs

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