Siona Ahuja ’24
Staff Writer
The lush botanical gardens, lakes and hillocks stitching together the buildings at Mount Holyoke provide spaces for students to decompress, take part in age-old traditions and build new memories — all integral parts of one’s academic experience. Green spaces, like those mentioned above, are recreational areas, which the EPA website says aim to “enhance the beauty and environmental quality of neighborhoods.” The Enrollment Services branch of EAB, a technology and research oriented firm formerly named the Educational Advisory Board, shows that green spaces affect students’ college decisions. After surveying 200,000 students in 2017, EAB discovered that campus environment is the number one reason students choose to enroll at different universities, considered more than academic reputation or cost. A poll conducted by the Mount Holyoke News Environmental section asked students whether campus landscaping and/or the green spaces around campus influenced their choice of college, to which approximately 80 percent of the 46 respondents said “yes.”
Not only is the landscape of a college campus one of the significant deciding factors for prospective students, but new studies have also revealed that such areas are vital for students’ mental and physical wellbeing, and their academic performance. Researchers at the German University of Bonn have documented evidence of “interlinkages between students’ perceptions of their health and physical, social and mental well-being in place and academic space,” as said in their 2021 article which was published in the journal Wellbeing, Space and Society.
The research cites numerous physical, mental and social advantages to green spaces on university campuses, including faster illness recovery, reduced prevalence of cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses, stress reduction, avoidance of negative moods and enhanced facilitation of social interaction.
Data from the Environmental section’s surveys resonate with the study conducted by the German researchers. 51 percent of MHN poll respondents reported they utilize campus green spaces every day, and 31 percent reported using them at least once a week. As students return to college campuses following the upheaval caused by the pandemic, the conversation around campus landscape has acquired new meaning. With social distancing and indoor masking rules still upheld by the College administration, the outdoors has become a welcome refuge to many returning students, as indicated by MHN’s poll. 92 percent of the students who responded to the poll and had been on Mount Holyoke’s campus before the pandemic reported that their use of green spaces has increased as compared to pre-pandemic times.
The connection between students’ outdoor environment and mental well-being is not a new concept. Frederick Law Olmsted was the prolific landscape architect behind the designs of Niagara Falls, Central Park, Yosemite and Mount Holyoke College. According to Mount Holyoke’s webpage on Olmsted, titled “The Olmsted Legacy,” “Olmsted felt that the landscape should occupy the mind ‘without purpose’ and produce a moment that would be free from stresses and refresh the mind and body.” His views on landscaping were congruent with the philosophy behind green spaces where embracing the natural state of the landscape is crucial.
Olmsted’s loyalty to the natural environments in which he designed outdoor spaces is reflected in the College’s approach to landscaping today, which focuses on sustainability and the use of native species in landscape design and management.
The College’s landscaping philosophy is outlined by the Miller Worley Center for the Environment’s Responsible Building Principles and Guidelines. The guidelines include suggestions to select plants native to the region, orient plants in the direction they originally grew in the nursery and to choose plants whose water requirements are met by the region’s usual precipitation patterns.
When designing Mount Holyoke’s campus in the 1890s, Olmsted and his sons, who carried out their father’s plan, followed these principles through. To this day, these 130 year old values remain pertinent to the College and its ever-changing landscape.