Last week we had our first taste of spring here in Montreal. A few balmy days paired with bright sun and later sunsets meant we were enjoying a few bright days that felt unmistakably like spring. But alas… the references to it being “the spring of deception” are all too real. Winter returned just as quickly with an ice storm days later.
Still, the signs of spring persevere. As the snow melts and the ground softens, the smell of damp soil returns, buds begin forming on branches that have been bare for months, and the first hints of green slowly make their way back into the landscape.
At BEDI, we often focus on the technical performance of what we make. Waterproof membranes, taped seams, breathability ratings. These details matter, especially in a climate like ours. But there’s a reason we chose to make outerwear. We design our pieces with the hope that they will help people get outside and enjoy nature more– whether it’s a walk.
The calming effect of green spaces is something many of us sense instinctively. Spending time outside is not only a pleasant way to pass an afternoon. It is also a return to the environments we are naturally built to inhabit.
The Biophilia Hypothesis: Why Nature Feels Like Home
In 1984, biologist Edward O. Wilson popularized the term biophilia in his book Biophilia.
The biophilia hypothesis proposes that humans have an innate, genetically influenced tendency to seek connections with nature and other living systems. According to Wilson, this affinity is not purely cultural or aesthetic—it is rooted in evolution.
Just as we possess instinctive fears (for example, of snakes or heights), we also display consistent cross-cultural preferences for certain landscapes:
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Open spaces with scattered trees
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Visible water sources
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Vegetation that suggests fertility and safety
These environments historically signaled survival.
Biophilia suggests that our attraction to green landscapes is not decorative. It is adaptive.
Green vegetation meant food, shelter, oxygen, and safety. Over time, those associations became embedded in our nervous system.
Today, when we look at trees lining a street or sit near a patch of grass, something in us relaxes. Not necessarily because we consciously analyze it, but because our biology recognizes it.
An Evolutionary History Written in Green
For the vast majority of human history, we lived outdoors. We relied on landscapes such as forests, grasslands, and river valleys for survival.
Distinguishing between subtle variations in green mattered. Is that plant edible? Was that movement in the trees wind, or a predator? Were there berries hiding beneath that thick foliage?
Our visual system evolved in response to those demands. Researchers have suggested that humans are able to discriminate more shades of green than any other colour in the spectrum. This heightened sensitivity would have supported foraging and threat detection.
In other words: our eyes developed in a green world.
When we step into natural environments today, we are not entering something foreign. We are re-entering the conditions that shaped our biology.
Why We See Green So Well
Human colour vision relies on three types of photoreceptor cells in the retina called cones:
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S-cones (short wavelengths, sensitive to blue light)
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M-cones (medium wavelengths, sensitive to green light)
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L-cones (long wavelengths, sensitive to red light)
These cones overlap in function, but the M-cones are specifically tuned to wavelengths between approximately 495–570 nanometres—the range we perceive as green. Together with the L-cones, they are densely concentrated in the fovea, the central region of the retina responsible for high-resolution vision.
Importantly, human visual sensitivity peaks around 555 nanometres, in the yellow-green portion of the spectrum. Under daylight conditions, this is where our eyes operate most efficiently. Hence, we process green light more easily than most other colours.
Because green sits in the middle of the visible spectrum, it requires less extreme focusing effort from the eye compared to high-energy blue light or longer red wavelengths. For many people, this translates into lower visual strain. So green is not simply pleasant, it’s efficient for us to perceive.
Chlorophyll: Why the World Is Green
Green’s dominance in nature is not arbitrary.
Plants appear green because of chlorophyll, the pigment essential for photosynthesis. Chlorophyll absorbs red and blue wavelengths of light in order to convert solar energy into chemical energy. The intermediate green wavelengths are reflected, hence the colour we see.
So the reason the natural world appears green is directly tied to the process that makes life possible. It’s the visible signature of photosynthesis– the foundational process of terrestrial ecosystems. When we describe green as “alive,” we are not being metaphorical. We are observing biochemistry.
Attention Restoration Theory (ART)
In the late 1980s, psychologists Rachel Kaplan and Stephen Kaplan proposed Attention Restoration Theory (ART).
ART begins with a simple observation: modern life demands sustained, directed attention. Screens, notifications, meetings and the clamour of daily life means we’re managing constant stimuli.
Directed attention is a finite cognitive resource. When overused, it leads to mental fatigue, irritability, and reduced performance. According to the Attention Restoration Theory, natural environments help restore this depleted capacity.
Soft Fascination
One of the core mechanisms is what the Kaplans called soft fascination.
Natural settings like moving clouds, rippling water, and leaves shifting in the wind gently hold our attention without demanding effort. Unlike scrolling or problem-solving, this engagement is effortless. It allows the brain’s executive systems to rest and replenish.
The Four Components of Restorative Environments
ART identifies four characteristics of environments that promote restoration:
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Being Away
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Fascination
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Extent
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Compatibility
Green spaces like parks, forests, fields and riverbanks consistently meet these criteria.
Research across environmental psychology has shown that exposure to natural settings improves attention, reduces mental fatigue, and enhances mood compared to built environments.
Of course, the colour green doesn’t act alone to create this phenomenon. But it is the dominant visual cue that signals “natural.”
Stress Reduction and Physiology
Beyond cognition, time in green environments affects measurable physiological markers.
Multiple studies in environmental health have found that exposure to natural settings is associated with:
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Lower cortisol levels (a primary stress hormone)
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Reduced heart rate
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Lower blood pressure
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Improved self-reported mood
One well-known study by environmental psychologist Roger Ulrich demonstrated that hospital patients with views of trees recovered more quickly and required less pain medication than those facing brick walls. While not solely about green colour, vegetation (and the green it reflects) was central to the restorative effect.
Subsequent research in forest environments (“forest bathing” studies in Japan, for example) has documented reductions in stress hormones and improvements in parasympathetic nervous system activity following time spent among trees.
The mechanisms are likely multi-layered: visual input, phytoncides (plant-emitted compounds), acoustic differences, and psychological associations all play a role. But visually, green dominates the scene.
Fractal Fluency: Why Natural Patterns Feel Comfortable
Nature is not visually random. It is patterned.
Tree branches, coastlines, ferns, clouds all exhibit fractals, repeating patterns at multiple scales.
Research in perceptual psychology suggests that the human visual system processes fractal patterns with relative ease. Some studies indicate that exposure to mid-range fractal complexity (similar to what we find in trees and leaves) is associated with reduced stress responses compared to more chaotic or overly simple patterns.
This concept, sometimes referred to as fractal fluency, proposes that because our visual system evolved in fractal-rich environments, it is optimized to interpret them efficiently, and green landscapes are dense with fractal geometry.
Why Green Reduces Eye Strain
There is also a straightforward optical explanation for green’s soothing reputation.
Because human photopic (daylight) vision peaks in sensitivity around 555 nanometres, we require less light intensity to perceive green clearly. It does not demand as much accommodative adjustment from the lens as more extreme wavelengths.
In practical terms:
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Green is bright without being harsh.
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It is visible without overwhelming.
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It sits in balance.
This may partially explain why green has historically been used in environments designed for sustained attention in places like classrooms, hospitals, even early computer interfaces.
Urban Life and Directed Attention Fatigue
Modern cities are visually intense with hard edges, straight lines, high contrast, rapid motion, artificial light and more. Plus, much of urban architecture lacks the layered depth and organic variability found in natural landscapes. It demands active filtering and interpretation.
Directed attention fatigue is not dramatic, but it does accumulate. It can show up as irritability, brain fog, and that sense of being “wired.” But green spaces help interrupt that cycle.
Even small doses through neighbourhood parks or even trees along a side street have been associated in public health research with improved psychological well-being.
The Benefits of Stepping Outside
In practice, this often shows up in small, ordinary choices. Taking a walk through the park instead of going straight home. Sitting for a while under a tree. Choosing the longer route when it passes through green space, or noticing the particular shade of green that begins to appear in early spring.
We often think of time in nature as something optional, a leisure activity for weekends or quiet afternoons when schedules allow. But if theories like biophilia and Attention Restoration Theory are correct, the role of these environments is far more fundamental.
Spending time in green spaces is not simply a pleasant way to pass the time. It helps restore attention, reduce mental fatigue, and recalibrate a system that evolved outdoors but now spends much of its life indoors.
On Clothing and Getting Outdoors
Anyone who lives in a northern climate is familiar with the old saying that “there is no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing”. Most of us have experienced the truth of it at some point. A cold rain or a windy afternoon can feel unpleasant if you are dressed for something else, but with the right layers it often becomes surprisingly manageable, even enjoyable.
In places like Canada, where the weather shifts constantly through the year and often within the same week, spending time outside can’t be dependent on waiting for perfect conditions. It’s more often about being prepared enough that the weather does not immediately send you back indoors.
That idea really informs how we think about outerwear. When we talk about waterproof membranes, taped seams, and thoughtful design, those details are not simply technical specifications. They are tools that make it easier to keep moving through a day that includes rain, snow, wind and sun.
So a short errand can turn into a longer walk. A grey afternoon might end with a quiet loop through the park. The difference is often small, but it matters.
If green spaces help restore attention and reduce stress, as research increasingly suggests, then the ability to step outside comfortably becomes more than a matter of convenience. In a very practical sense, good outerwear simply removes one of the small barriers that keeps us indoors. It allows the walk to happen anyway.
Much of modern life moves quickly. Information arrives constantly, attention is pulled in multiple directions, and many of us spend long stretches of the day indoors, moving from one screen to another.
From a biological perspective, that environment is relatively new. For most of human history, our senses developed in outdoor landscapes where light shifted through leaves, the ground changed underfoot, and the colour green signaled something simple but important: water, plant life, and the conditions needed to sustain us.
Research into ideas like biophilia and Attention Restoration Theory doesn’t romanticize nature so much as measure its effects. Time spent in green environments has been linked to restored attention, lower stress levels, and improvements in mood. What many people describe as a feeling of calm in parks, forests, or gardens turns out to have a fairly practical explanation.
We tend to notice it most clearly in early spring. After a long winter, we really feel the difference when the air smells faintly of damp soil, and the trees begin to take on that vivid, almost luminous shade of green that appears each year after months of winter.
It is not dramatic, but it is noticeable. Something about the landscape feels steadier again.
Part of that response may simply be recognition. Our eyes are comfortable processing green wavelengths, and our brains have spent a very long time interpreting those environments as places where life tends to do well.
Which may explain why even a short walk through a park, a ravine, or a tree-lined street can shift the way a day feels. It doesn’t have to be dramatic nor bold, but consistent small moments in nature can make a big difference.
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References embedded throughout: foundational work by Edward O. Wilson on biophilia; Kaplan & Kaplan’s Attention Restoration Theory; research on photopic luminous efficiency and peak sensitivity around 555 nm; environmental health studies on cortisol and natural environments; perceptual research on fractal processing; plant biology research on chlorophyll and photosynthesis.
