Welcome to episode 219 of Live Happy Now.

I'm your host, Paula Phelps, thanking you for joining us today.

If you're a regular listener of Live Happy Now, you already know that we're big fans of nature.

While we talk a lot about the value of getting out in nature, this week's guest is all about bringing it inside.

Summer Rain Oaks is an environmental scientist and sustainability expert who focuses on health

and wellness. Her website and YouTube channel, Homestead, Brooklyn, is designed to help people

who live in the city become more attuned to nature. Her new book, How to Make Your Plant Love You, looks at how to bring nature inside for greater

happiness and well-being.

So we caught up with Summer to talk about how to live in nature, even when we're inside.

Summer, thank you so much for joining us on the show.

I'm happy to be here.

This is an interesting twist for us because we've talked on Live

Happy now about the need for being in nature, but what I like is you're bringing all those

benefits inside. And I think that we haven't always thought about just how much plants can do for us.

So I wanted to find out, first of all, what made you so interested in learning about how plants affect us?

Well, this goes back deep because I'm a child of nature. So I am in full agreement that, you know,

it's so great to be outdoors and to run barefoot in the grass and all of that. But I know that

we don't all have the luxury of being able to do that, especially because so many of us are moving to the cities, including myself.

And that was part of the impetus of actually coming up with this book is really getting into these rituals and these routines with plants that we could develop even when we're in the city when we can't be outdoors.

And you really live in the city.

You want to talk about where you live?

I live in Brooklyn.

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