How to Bring Nature Into Your Family Home
The above video echoes much of what we discuss here at the Plant a Seed & See What Grows Foundation, as we cover inventive ways that kids can spend more time immersed in the great outdoors. However, time in nature should not stop once children step through the gates of their respective homes. Recognizing this, we’re flipping the script on the above video with recommendations for how to bring nature into your home and on the property. In some cases, it’s a seamless task, and in others a small investment of time and other resources are required. But it’s worthwhile in all scenarios, as welcoming nature to your household delivers a return-on-investment that will pay dividends for the entire family. The benefits of doing so include the following:
- Promotes photosynthesis, which converts carbon dioxide into clean oxygen that your family will breathe.
- Supports emotional and mental wellbeing for all members of the household, creating greater overall happiness.
- Improves cognitive functioning.
- Encourages creativity,
- Encourages positive interaction between family members and household guests.
- Promotes healthy activation of the basic human senses of sight (vision), hearing (auditory), smell (olfactory), taste (gustatory), and touch (tactile). This is vital because our senses act as our primary connection to the world, allowing us to gather information, interact with others, and experience life.
5 Ways to Bring Nature to Your Home for the Benefit of the Whole Family
Grow a Backyard and/or Indoor Garden
Bring nature into your home, beginning with the yard. Start a garden that consists of biodiverse blossoming plants (to attract pollinators) and food-bearing crops. If you don’t have outdoor space (or even if you do) there are about a half-dozen vegetables that can easily be grown indoors with some simple TLC, including avocados, tomatoes, carrots, chili peppers, and radishes. Click here for further insight into how to grow these inside of your home. How cool will it be to pick fresh vegetables for the family from your yard, and from within your home? This leads to our next suggestion.
Display Natural Foods in the Kitchen
Between what you grow (see the above suggestion) and family trips to local farmer’s market and natural foods retailers, you can keep your refrigerator crispers, kitchen counters, and dining room table teaming with colorful, nutritious, delicious, and all-natural foods. Be sure to keep visible bowls fully stocked with fresh fruits and veggies at all times, as it adds to the nature aesthetic in the home, and will encourage your kids (and you!) to conveniently reach for them instead of processed snacks in the cupboards.
Install More Natural Light and Air
The best parts of nature, are the natural light and fresh air that they bless our minds, bodies, and souls with. The more that you can invite into your home, the better for everyone in your household. This will require some investment unless you have a handy-person “on staff” as a part of the family, but when all is said in done it will make your home fundamentally better than you could have ever imagined. Where structurally viable, install more windows, or larger windows, so that the family’s gathering places (i.e. living room) receive natural light through most of the day as the sun passes from one side of the home to the next. Where possible, consider adding a skylight to further illuminate your rooms organically. Ensure the new (or retrofitted) windows open up to allow fresh air to waft through, and consider installing a solarium if space and budget allow. There is nary a better way to bring more nature into your loving abode.
Invite Wildlife
We’re not suggesting that you leave your doors (and new windows!) wide open to let raccoons wander in and have their way with the place. However, we do encourage you to make your outdoor spaces more accommodating to beneficial wildlife, such as pollinators who will help maintain your garden and the greenspaces that surround your community. While they won’t enter the home, your family can enjoy the sights and sounds of them from your patio and from the other side of household screens/windows. Our Foundation has dedicated a number of articles for how to attract both common and not-so-common pollinators that may be waiting for an invite on to your property:
Top 10 coolest pollinators to attract to your garden
How to make a pollinator garden
How to introduce pollinators into an urban environment
Garden design to attract birds
Bats and other summer night pollinators to invite into your garden
Seek and Collect Organic Decor for the Home
Start hunting and gathering to add the sights, scents, and touches of nature into each and every room of your home. Choose a balmy weekend and head to the forest and/or beach with the family and look for items that nature has left-aside to be collected. In this article on beachcombing, we encouraged families to curate eye-catching pieces of driftwood and sea-smoothed stones that make for amazing accents and decor for your nature-centric home. Meanwhile, in this feature about hiking to look for decorative treasures, you will find inspiration to seek out pinecones, interesting rocks, and feathers than can be used to create an outdoor aesthetic within nooks and crannies of the household. Display your natural gems in fun and inventive ways and keep collecting through all seasons!
We hope everything above was helpful. Meanwhile, please note that the Plant a Seed & See What Grows Foundation inspires and promotes healthy living and learning for kids across Canada. You can help us help the next generation by pledging your support too! View more on how you can get involved.
