Researchers Looked Into Sky Gardens And The List of Benefits They Found Is Longer Than Expected

Take a boat along the Torres Strait and arrive at Binaturi, a small village tucked in the South Fly of Papua New Guinea. Nestling within its mossy swamps, thatched wooden hut-houses, and damp embankments is a legend from the days gone by. As @doctorlegacy describes it, the village once cradled a magical stairway that opened into the world of clouds, where villagers climbed each day to work in a garden. Sky gardens have captured the imagination of people since ancient times, even before that, maybe.

From the infamous Hanging Gardens of Babylon to London’s Sky Garden, whose golden sunset views are a frequent vista popping up in Instagrammers’ reels. Aesthetics aside, researchers have now revealed that sky gardens are also profoundly healing, according to a study published in the journal Building and Environment.

The magic of green spaces

The space in urban settlements these days is becoming more and more concentrated with skyscrapers, high-rise buildings, leviathan strip malls, and arrays of cookie-cutter blocks. What’s left is occupied by factories whose swirling smoke chokes the sky and by fast food vendors whose fanning grills and simmering oils poison the air. This could be one of the reasons why town planners, urban developers, industrial designers, and architects are gravitating towards “green spaces.” Amidst this blighted high-density atmosphere, green spaces are magical jewels that promote rejuvenation and revival.

“Green spaces enhance human health and well-being by lowering depression, increasing happiness, and improving individuals' physical and health, and they offer important ways for the public to self-adjust to the health challenges of urbanisation,” researchers explained. For this particular study, the objective was to explore the “restorative effects of three types of sky gardens.” The research team was led by Yan Li and Hongwu Du from South China University of Technology.

What is a Sky Garden?

Also called a “podium garden,” a sky garden is a green space created by layering plants on a rooftop system, typically observed in high-rise buildings, according to Mullai J, a professor of landscape architecture at Periyar Maniammai Institute of Science & Technology. Researchers noted that sky gardens can significantly reduce roof temperatures as well as the overall heat in the air.

Acting as natural ventilators, sky gardens absorb carbon dioxide from the air, thereby liberating the urban spaces from the strangling pollution. Vertical gardens, which are just another form of sky gardens, have also proven to have restorative and curative effects on the human body.

Analyzing three types of sky gardens

Based on the various characteristics of high-rise buildings, the researchers curated three types of sky gardens for analysis, including plaza-park, rest-stay, and move-pass. Each type was examined using five indicators in three dimensions. A sky garden of each type was selected for the experiment, along with 12 typical case scenarios and 36 participants. A portfolio of 432 pictures was compiled from data and observations.

The data was collected based on the physiological responses the participants exhibited when exposed to the environment of the selected sky gardens. The responses were investigated based on factors like skin conductance resistance (SCR), heart rate variability (HRV), electroencephalogram (EEG), and eye movements. In addition to these physiological factors, several mental and emotional factors were also evaluated, including emotional valence, arousal self-esteem scale, and perceived restrictiveness during the sky garden spatial experience.

What did researchers find?

The first and most astonishing revelation from the experiment was that each type of sky garden induced different responses in the participants, especially in their internal spatial characteristics. The plaza-park sky gardens, for instance, showed better restorative outcomes pertaining to factors like their pupil diameter, blink count, fascination, coherence, and emotional valence. The rest-stay sky gardens depicted “better restorative effects on SCR, HRV, emotional arousal, and compatibility,” whereas the move-pass sky gardens had “the greatest restorative benefits in the average saccade count.”

So if you are ruffling your feathers in an urban heat island, this study is a cue for you to take a stairway to the sky and offer your mind and body a restorative healing retreat. You can also build your private sky garden by utilizing the rooftop or terrace space. Sprinkle it with your favorite plants, convert it into a green rain barrel, or transform it into a flower meadow.