Spending Time in Nature is good for your Mental Health

It's Mental Health Awareness Week! The theme for this year is anxiety. You can read more about the week on the Mental Health Foundation website.  

It's now well known that spending time in nature can alleviate stress and help us feel happier and more energised! Connecting with nature includes taking the time to stop and appreciate the flowers. 

These are the flowers of Green Alkanet, which stays green all year (hence the name!). 

 This Platycheirus sp hoverfly seemed to be enjoying the flowers! 

The Ramsons are still putting on a great show! 

In some places, this beautiful plant is being foraged so much that it is disappearing. (Read this informative article in the Guardian, which outlines the problem and gives some tips on sustainable foraging). Not mentioned in the article, is the fact that Few Flowered Leek, which is invasive, can actually be used in just the same ways as can Ramsons. So foraging the invasive species can help preserve the beautiful native species. 

Over the past couple of years, I've been paying more attention to mosses, which are beautiful plants and not as difficult to identify as I had first thought they would be! I had to ask the Edinburgh Natural History Facebook group for this one though, which turned out to be Mnium hornum

It's good for us to spend time in nature, but not everyone has easy access to open green spaces. Join the Wildlife Trust's call to make Nature for Everyone a legal requirement in the UK.