How to Use Flowers and Plants to Increase Wellness

When you feel down in the dumps or on overload, release those sad or stressful feelings by getting outdoors. For an inexpensive, healthy pick-me-up try gardening, or scout out what's blooming in your yard, neighborhood, park, garden, or arboretum. 

Studies show that walking in nature creates wellness by improving mental and physical health.

Updated 8/10/2020

Try this. Display flowers in your room, office, or home. It's a simple way to draw positive energy into daily living. 

Make it a point to observe flowers in a mindful way, pedal by pedal, leaf by leaf, and hue by hue. Mindfulness helps calm down overactive thinking and connects you with the bloom in the present moment. 

Another fun way to improve your outlook and sense of well-being is to visualize your favorite flower, plant, or outdoor scene. Imagine yourself romping around in a lovely place, breathing in the fresh air, inhaling delightful aromas, listening to the birds, and observing the sights including the lush green vegetation, sturdy, grounding trees, and colored flowers you love. 

A change of pace and flowery diversion often improves your outlook. In fact, research from Rutgers University suggests that flowers may be potent mood elevators. Those in the study who were given flowers, felt immediate satisfaction, and three days later, still experienced happiness.

That's been my experience too. Richly colored flowers make me smile, and picking a bouquet of wildflowers or admiring the first spring crocus or daffodil, reminds me that a power greater than myself is in my life.

Indoor plants and flowers spruce up a room and also serve to humidify the air, recycle carbon dioxide, and convert it into fresh oxygen. This sure is a boon to wellness.

Cacti is tops for reducing radiation, bacteria, and pollution. Cacti helps absorb carbon dioxide at night to release oxygen. Place cacti in your office to help you work more effectively and add color to your living space. Put it in blue pottery for the bedroom. The color blue and cacti help you sleep better at night.

Give fresh flowers to a loved one to convey you are thinking of them. As you do this, experience the joy of giving. Give yourself fresh flowers too. After all, you're a special someone, and don't need an excuse to be good to yourself. 

Brighten your mood; brighten your day.  Use flowers and plants to increase wellness. You'll be so glad you did.

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Unique Ways Colors are Key to Survival

The color of each plant, mammal, bird, fish, reptile, insect, and amphibian that is alive today is the result of its evolutionary process. Color helps living things fit into their natural surroundings, whether it’s into the wilds of the jungle, plains, mountains, woods, desert, or sea.

Post updated 3/13/2022

In natural habitats, living things take advantage of their color and color patterns in different ways. 

In mating season, the male robin (bird) has bright red breast feathers to attract a mate. The male puffin (another bird) displays bright rings on his beak only during mating season. They fade away the rest of the year. 

Flounder (a type of fish) has scales to blend in with its surroundings and to ward of predators both from below and above. See more about fish camouflage now.

Many species of chameleons have skin that can change color and blend into its environment. Some types of wildlife have skin with spots or stripes, and it's used as disruptive colorization. This means animals including zebras have stripes in colors that disrupt the outline of its shape, and this pattern helps confuse its predators.

An eastern screech owl, who is almost a perfect color match to the bark of trees it hangs out on, can sleep restfully undisturbed, while those animals that hunt for him can’t locate him.

Vivid colors in the animal kingdom can have the reverse effect. They help animals stand out from the crowd. Some animals that display bright colors show they are poisonous. 

On the other hand, there are animals that use warning colors for mimicry. Their color is similar to ones used by dangerous animals, and this disguise offers protection to the harmless animal. 

Sometimes distinct colors act as a warning sign to other animals and people not to trespass. For instance, most of us know when we notice a small black creature scurrying nearby, to check out whether the animal has a white stripe running down its back. We may even have learned the hard way to keep a safe distance from that black and white skunk.