As I write this I am staying with my mother in an area that was once known for its expansive gardens and lovely spaces, that made a perfect hide and seek environment for a little girl among the bushes, giant trees, wooded glades and rhododendrons. It was also ideal for exciting, frantic peddling on our tricycles, bikes and go-karts. But over the last 20 years developers have left their clumsy mark with large, unattractive new-build family homes.

Now that these new style-less mansions are erected, what is left of the land I remember, are giant swathes of paving slabs and indigenous trees replaced by huge potted palms and other low maintenance species from overseas.

While my mother is unafraid to sharply tell every house on the block to plant flowers and grow some native trees for the birds and insects, the fact her pleas generally fall on deaf ears means that the local wildlife has made a bee-line (so to speak) for her oasis of an environment. As a result butterflies, dragonflies, bees, squirrels and frogs at least seem grateful for her efforts!

But it’s not all altruistic striving for nature, it is for our own good too that we don’t lose sight of and access to these green and forested areas.

Over 100 years ago Octavia Hill, one of the founders of The National Trust observed, ‘the sight of sky and things growing are fundamental needs, common to all men’. Then in 2005 Californian author Richard Louv wrote the seminal ‘Last Child in the Woods’ in which he stated, ‘Nature Deficit Disorder describes the cost of human cost of alienation from nature, among them: diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties, and higher rates of physical and emotional illness’.

Octavia Hill may have been ahead of her time, but Richard Louv was very much observing and writing as a man of his time. Nature Deficit Disorder is now an accepted phrase and condition and, worryingly, it is becoming increasingly rife particularly in children. It is easy to jump to conclusions that this is due to poverty and technology - which of course impacts - but as I glance around here, poverty sure isn’t the issue and yet I can’t remember the last time I saw a kid enjoying their garden and the surrounding shared areas.

Once lockdown was over, the roads became busy again and the burgeoning wildlife from the quiet Spring and Summer suddenly found crossing the road fatally hazardous. We couldn’t protect these poor creatures but we can and do protect children, but when does that become to the detriment of allowing their senses to be fully fired by their natural environment? It started off by building smart playgrounds with lower risk factors like bouncy surfaces so as to avoid harsh falls. I’m not saying falling onto concrete from the monkey bars was fun but it certainly taught you caution, respect for what you were doing and proprioception. And did we end up in casualty more then the now?

My work is in health, fitness, wellbeing along with bioregulatory medicine, I’m not a professional conservationist nor child psychologist but for 30 years I’ve seen adults later in life stymied by a lack of outdoor stimulus. The confidence that is regained, the senses that are recharged and renewed when this situation is addressed is quite profound.

We might not be totally conscious of it but we are uplifted by colours of plants and trees, positively adapted by light filtered through clouds or reflections, charged by negative ions beneath our feet, soothed by sounds whether they’re buzzing or blowing in the breeze, all while smelling the richness of a season and touching textures that stimulate the senses.

It must be true because manufacturers and marketers miss very few tricks and they have created a baby’s blanket that does soft, silky, bumpy and crunchy, add some LED flashing lights and a scratch and smell patch and there we have it, the beginnings of a faux environment! Of course when that is in tandem with the real thing, it is wonderful. When it is instead of, as increasingly seems to be the case, then we are breeding Nature Deficit very early on.

We have smart windows that offer sea and mountain views from what is actually a totally windowless room in a city basement, we have ‘real flame’ fires that are actually films of flames that were once real somewhere else. We have piped sounds of streams and birdsong, there are scents pumped into rooms that calm or energise. “Better than nothing” you might say, and you’d be right, but these things must never be regarded as a viable substitute for the real thing. A treadmill is a convenient way of getting in a bit of a run when you can’t get out or the weather is too horrendous to consider it, and it is better than sitting on your backside eating biscuits. But let's not lose sight of the fact that it comes with far fewer overall holistic benefits of a run outside.

I’m very conscious I could be writing this for readers based deep in the heart of an urban jungle, but we are so lucky here in Ceredigion. The weather might not always play ball, but it is a gorgeous part of these isles and offers so much in terms of the great outdoors. Let's never take it for granted and we never have any excuse to find ourselves in Nature Deficit!

As for me right now, my dog Dudley and I will venture down the road, past the perfect drives, manicured lawns, giant gates and palm trees before we finally reach the woods and the boggy River Bourne where I had many adventures over 40 years ago and lost numerous gloves and wellies, none of which has yet been concreted over.

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