Landscape as Healthcare

Green space improves mental and physical health outcomes. This is established, replicated and no longer interesting to argue about.

What remains unresolved is distribution. The people whose health would improve most are consistently the people furthest from a usable path, with the least confidence in arriving, and the most reason to expect a place will not accommodate them.

So the design work is not persuasion. It is gradient, surface, rest points, sightlines, lighting, transport, and whether the route begins somewhere a person can actually get to.

We designed the Slow Mile with occupational therapists in the room from the first sketch. The result contains no innovation whatsoever. It is simply a woodland path that a person with a walking frame can complete, and enjoy, and repeat.