What attracts us to the color of certain flowers or how could the backyard landscape as designed

and as it expresses itself impact our own psyche or even our human health.

So we have Dr. Ross Cameron back on the show, a research director within the Department

of Landscape Architecture at the University of Sheffield amongst many other things.

I encourage you to check out the podcast description to see what Ross is up to.

But we talked about birds yesterday Ross and now turning to the color choices in the garden,

both stuff that we choose, but also maybe stuff that just just grows and impacts us.

Yeah, so obviously flowers have color, plants have color.

We need to question why flowers have a color.

So the reason they're there is they're actually attracting the eye of the bee and the butterflies

and everything else that will pollinate them. So they provide color that we see,

but also colors we don't see, the ultraviolet spectrum as well.

So a bee will actually see a petunia in a slightly different way that you and I would do it.

But we think it also has an effect on us. We think there's emotional responses to color in the garden

and it's certainly increasing interest in so-called therapeutic gardens

that you design with that in mind and that you provide different emotional

experiences on the sort of predominant colors that you design into the landscape.

And there's been known for since the Victorian area, the greens, the blues, the poppoles

relax you. They tend to slow the metabolism of you and so if you're looking for a sort of

chill out place then it's actually lavender and you know the grays and the greens

and that's kind of stops the stimulation. But if you're actually wanting to get the

blood pulsing, if you want to improve mood, if you actually induce what's called positive effect,

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