The perceived restorativeness of gardens – Assessing the restorativeness of a mixed built and natural scene type

Abstract

Natural environments have been found more restorative than built environments but studies have also highlighted mixed built and natural environments. The aims were to examine the perceived restorativeness of gardens, and evaluate the performance of the Perceived Restorativeness Scale, PRS, when applied to two examples from the same mixed built natural scene type rather than to a contrast between built and natural. The results show that the gardens are perceived restorative and the PRS also discriminated between the two gardens. This points to the PRS being a useful tool and emphasizes the shortcomings of broad scene type definitions. The results show that one scene type can include environments that are significantly different in perceived restorativeness. This underlines the need to collect data on a greater number of different scene types and examples within each type, as well as to have more controlled definitions of content and scene types to understand the relationship between the physical expression of a place and its potential of being restorative. The results show that the PRS is sensitive to place characteristics at subscale level, showing a high Being Away score for both gardens and a Scope score that differed substantially. The results show a high correlation between restorativeness and preference

Keywords

Design; Preference; PRS; Restorative environments

Published in

Urban Forestry and Urban Greening
2008, volume: 7, number: 2, pages: 107-118
Publisher: Elsevier

SLU Authors

• Tenngart Ivarsson, Carina

  • Department of People and Society, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Hägerhäll, Caroline

  • Department of Landscape Architecture, Planning and Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

Associated SLU-program

Nature experiences and health

Global goals (SDG)

SDG11 Sustainable cities and communities

UKÄ Subject classification

Landscape Architecture

Publication identifier

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2008.01.001

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/18053