 I'd like to welcome you to our fifth in a series of 11 spring webinars. They're all at the same time, but each one has a different link. I'm your host and also your presenter. I'll be telling you a little bit more about myself shortly, but my name is Julie Garden Robinson. I'd like you to attend next week if you're interested in the topic of developing and selling food products that are safe and tasty. That will feature Clifford Hall, who's a professor here on campus in food science. The following week, we'll be looking at organic vegetable production with Greta Grammick. She's a professor in plant sciences. So I'm very grateful to all the professors and extension specialists who have agreed to help deliver these webinars. We've been doing this now for about three years. So we're always looking for more ideas. So when you fill out your survey, certainly give us some ideas of what other types of topics you're interested in learning about. I also want to point your attention to a FISMA, which is a Food Safety Modernization Act Produce Grower Training Workshop. That's going to be in Jamestown coming up on April 5th. For those of you who are growers or maybe educators, I think this will be a very valuable workshop to consider attending. We're bringing in Connie Fisk from Cornell University and also Holly Moby, and I'll also be helping. So if you have questions about that, certainly let me know. It's very low cost, basically we're covering the cost of your meals, the rest of it is covered by a grant. So and the registration for this is on the same place where you registered for these workshops. I think you've all pretty much figured out the Zoom controls. I hope we don't have any problems on campus. One week we were doing this and my presenter and our technician had to leave campus because we had an internet outage all across campus. So that was kind of tricky. So anyway, there's the chat box. I have you all on mute right now, but I can unmute you later if you want to say your question out loud. But it just works better if it's quiet and we'll give you time if you want to talk or you can type anytime you want. I mentioned that we have a survey, really short one and as a special gift, I have a number of pretty neat prizes that we're going to give out at the end of the series. So the more that you do the surveys, the more opportunity you have to win prizes. And the prizes are a surprise, so I'm not going to tell you what they are, but they're really cool. So with that, I am Julie, Julie Garden Robinson, one of the few people who can actually say Garden is my middle name because it is. Actually, it was my last name. I'm a Food and Nutrition Specialist and Professor at NDSU, and I've served in this role for over 20 years. I do research and education all across the state, working with our extension programs all over North Dakota. I'm a registered dietitian and I have master's and doctorate degrees in Applied Food Science. I'm also a master gardener. I got so many questions about gardening related topics, and I figured I had to learn a little more. I have gardens since I was a little child, and sometimes rather reluctantly, but it's all good, and I hope that you enjoy today's session. One thing if you want to follow up, I do write a weekly column and also a blog, and I always have recipes if you like to cook and sort of seasonal topics. So let's get started. And this is an outline of where we're going today. We're gonna talk a little bit about gardening and mental health, gardening and physical health, and also social health. I was going to title this whole presentation is Gardening Healthy, but I think you know the answer to that. It is, and it's more healthy than I ever thought it was. And I'd like to thank my student, Sally Yakowitz, who looked up a lot of research in putting this together. So I really appreciate that work. We have posted a PDF file of this presentation, and there are clickable links. So if you wanna read more about these topics, you can certainly go to the Field of Fork website and download that and click on those links. It'll take you to a lot of additional information. So let's start with mental health. This isn't my field, but I have done some study in the area. Gardening is certainly proving to be good for our mental health in several ways. In fact, dating back to the 18th century, Benjamin Rush was the first doctor to document how gardening benefited his mentally ill patients. And he's the one who dubbed it horticulture therapy. So when you go out to your garden, someone asks you what you're gonna do, you're gonna say, I'm going out for some horticulture therapy. If any of you have ever traveled to Fergus Falls, Minnesota, this is the Kirkbride building, and named after Thomas Kirkbride, who is actually the founder of the American Psychiatric Association. And I've been on a tour of this building. It was really interesting. It's closed now, but it's been in place for well over 120 years. And he was a believer in the philosophy that gardening was one of the best remedies. In fact, all the patient rooms had a view out into nature because he really felt that interacting with and viewing nature was good for mental health. And you see one of his quotes on the screen. Not only was it a remedy for people who were mentally ill, but also for everyone else. So it really had interesting philosophy and I encourage you to look more into it because he was ahead of his time in realizing the direct benefits of gardening on psychological health. So some research that we found, they found that 30 minutes of gardening caused people to be in a better mood compared with 30 minutes of reading. Now we want you to read as well as garden, but it was kind of interesting that this was the first study that looked at that. And this was done in the Netherlands and they recorded the amount of stress hormones in the saliva of the people. And they found lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol in the blood and also in the saliva among those who were outside gardening. So good physical evidence that there's a direct health benefit for gardening and mood. Well, if any of you like to have flowers around your home or plants in your workplace, those have been shown to reduce stress levels as well. They're naturally beautiful. This aesthetic beauty is really soothing to people and they can help you feel more relaxed. And I know I'm talking to a bunch of gardeners. You've probably noticed all the cacti that are appearing in a lot of stores. They have whole displays of cacti in some of the gardening stores where I visited. They're also becoming more and more an interior design feature. So they beautify our environment, but they also boost our mood. I have two plants right behind me as I speak. And I just have to remember to water them and then they keep me happy. Scientists also have studied the effect of plants, how it relates to learning. And they found among children that having some plants in the learning environment in the classroom can help improve focus and also concentration. It helps kids absorb and retain information and it also reduces their tendency to be distracted. So this beauty in the environment and especially I would say if the kids help care for these plants can help their learning. They've looked at the relationship of plants and learning in a natural environment and the relationship to attention deficit order. And they find that if you alter the learning environment to reduce the distraction as some plants, you'll see improved focus and concentration on the tasks. So even in this area of ADHD for example, plants can help at least according to some studies certainly won't hurt. In soil we have a lot of different types of bacteria. One of them is a harmless type of bacteria. It's called mycobacterium faxiae. And this particular type of bacteria is linked with increased serotonin production in the brain. And serotonin is one of the neurotransmitters in our brain that is associated with a better mood. So you might have read or heard about serotonin and chocolate because having some chocolate can actually boost the serotonin levels a bit. I'll take your cup of chocolate milk outside and enjoy it on your patio with your plants and you are going to help yourself out perhaps. So just some interesting studies that these sometimes bacteria are good for you. I do a lot of work in food safety and we're often like stay away from all the bacteria but some of them are good for you. Even the ones in the soil. In VA hospitals, Veterans Administration hospitals they often use gardening as a way to reduce stress hormones. So gardening has been used as a treatment in post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD. This horticulture therapy is frequently implemented into hospital settings. So another interesting helpful use of plants. Another group of researchers looked at how plants affect concentration and memory. And they found that being outside can actually improve your memory. If you were doing a task like the picture shows outside you could improve your memory by 20%. So if you have a big test to study for or you're working on something really difficult, these researchers found that greater accuracy and higher quality results came out when people just moved their work environment outside. Kind of hard in the winter I realize but we're talking about spring and summer and fall. It's very calming to be in nature. Among adults, gardening can actually reduce our risk of dementia because when we garden we have to think. Often we're learning new things. We're having to decipher whether it's a weed or whether it's a young plant. And we're also using our creativity when we're planting those flowers and pots and gardens and so on. We're using that creative part of our brain that keeps our mind active. Anything we can do throughout our life to keep our mind active, whether it's dancing or gardening or learning how to play a musical instrument it's all really good for us. In fact, if you want to learn more about nutrition and physical activity and brain health check out our nourishing, nourish your body. It's a website that's easily accessible on the NDSU Extension site. So we have a lot more information than what I'm sharing with you today so I encourage you to check that out. So anyway, gardening can serve as a protective measure against these degenerative diseases. So one study that followed people in their 60s and 70s for 16 years found that those who garden had a 36% lower risk of dementia than non-gardeners when they took into account other health factors. Well, that's a potent reason that we all want to maintain our mental faculties and it's very simple if we actually spend some time outside and garden. Other researchers have looked at how you can help manage symptoms of dementia. Simply by gardening you can ease the aggression that often is related to dementia and you can slow the progression of dementia by keeping your mind active. So get out there, dig around in the dirt, try different color combinations, new plants, all these different things, even planting in pots or just having house plants. All of these things are being shown to be helpful for long-term health. Now we're gonna get into more of my area where I actually do work and that's in physical health. So we're gonna talk a little bit about nutrition and I wanna get you involved a little bit as we move along through. So just start thinking now about your fruit and vegetable intake. We're gonna do a little activity shortly but just get that seed in your mind to think about what amount of fruits and vegetables are you eating? What researchers have found, and this is true whether it's kids gardening or adults, that growing fresh produce makes it more likely that you're gonna eat that fresh produce. Not only are gardeners likely to show higher nutrition knowledge but they're more likely to continue healthy eating habits throughout their lives. So get kids involved and also as adults, we don't want that beautiful produce to go to waste. We wanna eat it. Eating more fresh fruits and vegetables is really great for your health. You'll never hear a nutritionist say, don't eat any fruits and vegetables, trust me. And in fact, March, right in the middle of March, March is National Nutrition Month. So hopefully you're hearing some messages about nutrition all month from various people in the nutrition field. So most of the time when we're looking at people's diets what we're finding is a shortfall in fruits and vegetables. And gardening helps us, as I said, increase our intake. Fruits and vegetables are great sources of fiber, vitamins and minerals. And eating more of these fruits and vegetables can reduce our risk for many nutrition related diseases whether it's heart disease or cancer in particular or even diabetes. And eating more fruits and vegetables can boost our immunity. So we're less likely to get the colds and the flu or have them linger for a long time. And this has been a rough flu and cold season this year. But think about your dining habits and how much fruits and vegetables you're eating throughout the day. So now it's time for you to think a little bit. We'll just pause for a little while. Did you have any fruits or vegetables this morning for breakfast? You have any juice? Did you have any, an egg with some vegetables mixed in? Did you have some whole fruit? Did you have an orange or a banana? So now I want you to think about lunch. What did you have before we met and any snacks? Did you have any vegetables for lunch? Did you have some carrot sticks? If you were hungry for a snack this morning, what did you have for a snack? Hopefully you'll be hungry for a snack right after this session and grab some fruits and vegetables. That's an optimal time to do that. Well, we haven't had time to have our evening meal yet. So I want you to think back to yesterday, last evening. Did you have any fruits and vegetables and how much did you have for dinner or supper? Whatever you want to call it. Okay, so you should have a little number or maybe if you can't think of how many you've had, just track for today. And as the screen notes, you can include dry edible beans as a vegetable. So that can either be a protein food or a vegetable. So in general, a cup of raw or cooked vegetables or vegetable juice or two cups of raw leafy greens would be considered one cup from the vegetable group. So now our recommendations are in cups. We used to say servings, you're probably familiar with the term five a day, like eat five a day that was all over the United States for many, many years. And now it's still fine if you eat five a day, but the recommendations for fruits and vegetables is actually increased from the time of five a day. Because that was more equal to about two and a half cups. And now you're gonna see shortly that it's much more than that. So here's a real pretty picture. Take a cue from nature as you're making these fruit and vegetable selections. Be sure that you're eating a rainbow. Eat all the different colors of the rainbow, the oranges, the reds, purples, because each one of those color can be a cue for nutrition and each one of those colors is often associated with some particular nutrients. Like the yellows are associated with carotenoids, carrots, carotenoids, that's the name of the pigment. And carotenoids are converted into vitamin A and we need that for healthy eyes and healthy skin and so on. So color is a good cue, but I'm not gonna say that white food is not healthy because actually it is. Those white bananas and potatoes are excellent sources of potassium. So we wanna eat the whole rainbow, the whole spectrum of colors and try to get as many different colors incorporated in your diet every day. And I'm not talking M&M's or Skittles. We do have a publication, I put this together many years ago and I keep on updating it because it continues to be popular. We have it linked with your resources for today. It's called What Color Is Your Food and it talks a little bit more about the health benefits of particular colors. So even those yellowish colored foods, we have a yellow spot in our eye that has to be fed and it's called lutein that's in our eye and we get lutein from dark green leafy vegetables. So these things, these different pigments actually feed our body and provide us with the nutrients that we need. So that's a real pretty publication. Good artists that put together the pages for us. We also have many, many resources on the Field to Fork site. These were a project, I worked with community nutrition students, they each developed a handout. So on the Field to Fork site, if you click into the handouts, you'll see, I think there's about 10 of them perhaps, raspberries, leafy greens, tomatoes. On the backside, you'll find at least three recipes for each. So if you're wanting to do something new with tomatoes, you might find some new recipes. We have a lot of recipes on our website. So just some things, if you're hungry for fruits and vegetables, we have some resources and the Field to Fork materials were put together based on foods that we can grow in our area. So we can grow raspberries, leafy greens real easily. And you'll also find how to grow these thanks to my friends in horticulture. So let's use the chat box for a second. Let's have you raise your hand if you have ever seen this diagram. Is this familiar to you? This is my plate. I hope I see all the hands. This has been around for, well, since about 2010 or 11, thereabouts. And I see Cliff asked a question, why not use grams versus cups? Oh, Cliff, you know better than that. People are more used to cups. That's a household measure. And people just can visualize cups better than they could visualize something from the metric system. Cliff is a food scientist. He's our speaker next week. So I think he's teasing me. So my plate is a good visual. It's our icon for nutrition right now. And as you can see, what percent of your plate should be fruits and vegetables? Type it in the chat box. What percent, 50%, half of our plate, according to current guidelines based on the US Dietary Guidelines for Americans should be fruits and vegetables. All those different beautiful colors. And then about a quarter of our plate, little bit more than that, grains, especially whole grains, and protein foods, lean proteins, whatever kind of protein you like, animal-based, plant-based, it all counts. And then a calcium source, such as dairy, milk, or if you can't drink milk, find another calcium source that you can consume. That could be soy milk. It could be another type of milk. But the calcium from dairy seems to be better absorbed than calcium from other sources or from dietary supplements. So again, we have color, but this time the color doesn't relate to food color necessarily. It helps us divide out what the different food groups are. So grains are shown as sort of that brownish, gold color, proteins, purple, and dairy blue, and so on. Well, there we go. Make sure you get a wide variety of foods every day. The recommendations were switched to cups instead of servings because it was kind of confusing to go with servings. So now we do go with cups. So like a typical measuring cup size. So here we go. Find your age. This is the daily vegetable recommendation. So for example, if you're a woman in between the ages of 19 and 50, two and a half cups of vegetables per day is the daily recommendation. If you're a man, 51 or older, two and a half cups are 19 to 53 cups. So a slightly different based on age and gender in some cases. Sometimes they're the same. This is why I was having to think about all the vegetables and fruits that you've eaten today or thinking back to yesterday or looking ahead to tomorrow. These are the goals for Americans to be eating more fruits and vegetables just because they're so healthy for us. So now let's take a look at fruit. A fruit juice does count, but the current guidelines recommend that we go ahead and try to have more whole fruit than fruit juice. Fruit juice has much less fiber and it does concentrate the sugar content. There's natural sugars. That's not bad for you. So don't worry if you see that. That doesn't mean if you get 100% juice that they added sugar to it. There are natural sugars present. But you can see the recommendations. It's two cups for most except 31 to 51 plus year old women, one and a half cups. So in general, I typically say four and a half cups of fruits and vegetables total per day. And unfortunately, very few Americans meet that goal. So we're really working on that. We do a lot of programs in schools with kids and people of all ages that really focus on trying to get people to try more fruits and vegetables. Well, here's some good news. They did a study of cancer survivors for a year and half were enrolled in a gardening program and half were put on a wait list. And they did find that the gardeners were eating on average one more fruit or vegetable serving per day than non gardeners. So having that garden fresh produce and maybe being the one that does the work involved in raising a garden, harvesting, preparing, you don't want that food to go to waste. You want to consume it and enjoy it. So definitely gardening can promote healthier eating. Here's a piece that our extension associate Stacy Wang just put together for us. It's a brand new website, new front page. We have all kinds of information in the area of food preservation. We have, you can click on canning. So if you want to make salsa safely, you can simply go there. We have all the directions on how to do it, drying, freezing, curing and smoking. We have some information on pickling, a little bit on fermenting, including how to make cabbage or how to make sauerkraut from cabbage. And we're going to build some more pieces into the equipment site. So we have a lot of ready to go free materials. Just click, download, check it out. If you have questions on food preservation, certainly check in with our county extension offices. They are all very well equipped to help you out with questions if you have a particularly an FCW family and community wellness agent in your area. So don't forget your extension human resources out around North Dakota. Okay, now I'd like to go back a little bit more into immunity. So we talked about this bacteria, Michael Bacterium Vaxea, the soil bacteria. There's actually quite a high exposure for gardeners because when you're digging around in the soil, maybe on your hands and knees, you are going to be exposed and the researchers have found that this bacteria stimulates our immune system. That means it gets it stronger. It's a stronger immune system. So I'll ask you a question in the chat box again. How many of you grew up going out pulling a carrot or a radish out of your garden and eating it without washing it? Did anyone do that? Yep. Well, here's the good news. It probably didn't do you any harm at all. You know, like I said, I do teach food safety. So now I must tell you that you should wash those fruits and vegetables thoroughly. It's a good idea. But there is some evidence just that exposure to soil bacteria is good for you. So bottom line, you do have to wash it off. But if you did it in the past, maybe you're a healthier person as a result. I think we can be a little bit too clean. So it's good to expose kids to different things, especially gardening. Another thing to think about with gardening is that when you are applying pesticides, if you choose to do that, you have personal control over the amount that you know if you did it or if you didn't. And you don't always know for sure with some store-bought produce. You don't always know. Even some of the organic produce has been shown to have some pesticides. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with pesticides. We're gonna have a session on that. It does need to be properly applied and you have to follow the directions. But we certainly have some additional controls over it if we're doing the gardening ourselves. So this is a really interesting study. I'm sure everybody has visited someone in a hospital at some point, or maybe you've been in the hospital yourself. What this group of researchers found that nature, views of nature, helped people heal better. So they studied people that either had a view of trees out their window or a brick wall. And they found that if there was a view of trees, there was a significantly shorter hospital stay than if you were looking out at a brick wall. And they also had fewer complaints and they found that those patients had less pain medication. So if we think about even bringing in those plants when we go to visit someone in the hospital, we talked about that earlier, that can boost their mood. And who knows, maybe those plants, because they also release oxygen, the ones in the room, maybe that's helping them heal as well. Who knows, but we do know that looking outside and seeing the beauty of nature can help you heal better. So getting back to horticulture therapy, we've also found or researchers have found that gardening can significantly reduce recovery time after medical procedures. So getting people busy, tending even small amounts of plants can help speed the recovery time. So all good stuff. Many of our plants have very good medicinal properties. In fact, early medicines were herbal. And if you've never grown anything or you wanna get started with something really easy and even something you could do in your house, check out some of our herb growing guides. We have a garden to table growing herbs and really fun. You just grow them almost like house plants, I guess. And then you can move them out in the summer. And we had a lot of fun in my family growing things like basil. And it was just fun to go outside and clip off some rosemary. Didn't have to go to the store. It was much, much less expensive to be able to go in and clip it. So there's a lot of scientific research that's being done on these medicinal properties of plants. And in fact, some of that has been done even on campus at NDSU. And I believe some of it is being done on traditional medicine out at one of the reservation sites in North Dakota. So there's just a great amount of work that's yet to be done, but they seem to know that these plants had those medicinal properties many, many, many years ago. So enjoy some herbs, add flavor without fat and salt and so on. So add some more to your diet. Okay, how about being out in the sun? Well, I'm missing the sun. Has anyone else missing the sun? Raise your hand. I think we all have had a very long winter if you've lived in North Dakota, Minnesota area. There's a lot of benefits to moderate exposure to sunlight. And in fact, sunlight prompts the synthesis or the making of vitamin D on your skin. We can get vitamin D from food. We can get vitamin D from supplements, but we all need it. And vitamin D is being linked to lots of different disease prevention cases. So make sure that you're getting your vitamin D. If you haven't had much exposure to sun, I hope you've been taking some vitamin D supplement. And typically they're in that 400 to 800 microgram range. So you might wanna ask your doctor or healthcare provider if that's something you should be taking. But why is this important? Because we need it for both bone health and also immune health. For our bones, having adequate vitamin D helps increase the calcium absorption and can help prevent or reduce our risk for osteoporosis, which is literally porous bones. Bones with little holes in them. We all wanna keep our bones strong. So we do need this vitamin D. And as I said, just being out in the sun, it's only a couple times a week for maybe 10, 15 minutes. It's not laying out in the sun. And we have another, I'm gonna point out another resource, brand new. And we call it health-wise for guys, but the information is good for women as well. So remember that, just Google health-wise for guys NDSU. And there's a whole section on helping prevent skin cancer as well. Because too much sun exposure is not good for us either. So we need to moderate that as with anything in life. Moderation's a good idea. So check out that resource. There's also additional information about everything from prediabetes to heart disease to colon cancer, all based on research we did with men and what they wanted to know. And all of you women out there who have men in your life know that you were only second to medical providers for being the best source of information about health. So it's really important for all of us who are married or have a significant other to be sure that we know this information because that person often will depend on us to let them know. So check that information out. And as I said, there is some information about sun exposure and skin cancer. So again, moderation, little sun is good for us. And also good probably for mental health. Okay, now let's talk about physical activity. There was a positive correlation or association between having a park in the neighborhood and the amount of physical activity that people got. So it's very inexpensive to live close to a park. And they found that having this park close by can reduce health problems and associated medical costs all across the community. So we're fortunate in Fargo and I'm sure many of you all across the state have some access to parks or areas where you can go and enjoy nature. And I encourage you to do that. It's free to walk in a park and it's also really good for you. So take a walk, check it out. Simply being in nature and gardening with all the bending and stretching and loading up bags of soil that's load bearing exercise that can improve our muscle tone and it also can help prevent osteoporosis. When we have that weight on our bones, like when we're walking, for example, we're putting weight on our bones which strengthens them. So get that walking if you can or if you cannot figure out alternative exercises to keep your muscles strong throughout life. Heart health or cardiovascular health is also linked to gardening. So when we go outside and we pull those weeds and we reach for plants and tools and we walk around and then you forget that you need a hoe and you have to go over to the shed and get the hoe and so on, that can all be aerobic exercise and that's good for our heart. Get out there, play if you have a dog or other pet. Run around in your yard, that's all good for your heart health and mental health. So weight management also has been shown as a benefit of doing gardening and weight management can mean weight gain or weight loss. For example, people who have cancer sometimes lose a lot of weight and they can, you know, once they are feeling better, we often want them to gain some weight. Well, this was an interesting study. They found that cancer survivors in a gardening program gained about slightly less than an inch around their waist. Those not in a gardening program gained about three inches in their waist. Gaining a lot of weight around your waist isn't good for your heart. So that's the meaning of this. So we want to have a moderate intake of food to maintain our weight and also enough exercise also to maintain our weight. So interesting study with cancer survivors. So if you've ever wondered when you go out and you mow your lawn, how many calories are you burning? You know, on average for an adult, the nutrition labels that are currently on food packages are based on about a 2000 calorie daily limit. That's, you know, we don't all need that many calories. You know, some people need more, some people need less. But that's what the information on current nutrition labels is based on. So to maintain our weight, it's a matter of, you know, managing those calories in versus the calories burned. So if you go out and you mow your lawn for an hour, you're gonna burn about 306 calories. And this is based on an average adult, probably 150 pound adult. You go out and weed and cultivate your garden, get in there and really dig, get out that hole. You're gonna burn about 238 calories. More digging, spading, 272 calories. Raking, 204, we're not gonna think about raking. We first have to grow these trees, leaves on trees. But in the fall, raking is a good exercise. Trimming trees or shrubs with a manual cutter, 238 calories. So these are all good ways to burn calories. And on average, if you were just walking around, typically we would say for 30 minutes of just walking, it's about 150 calories probably. So doing some of these activities is at least equal to walking briskly. Okay, and the final category that I have, we had physical health and mental health. And I'll just talk a little bit about social health. So parks and botanical gardens really can contribute to a community's awareness and education. So if you have the opportunity to go to places, North Dakota has a wonderful garden, peace gardens. Minnesota has beautiful botanical gardens. Check those out, because that can really raise your awareness and they're just simply beautiful to enjoy. A lot of greenhouses also have lots to look at as well. Often they plant plants all over it. So check that out. That's, I think we're gonna see more and more gardening, more and more plants showing up around storefronts. We're seeing that, I'm seeing that as I shop around as well, because it increases the beauty and it makes you wanna go and enjoy those places. Well, community gardens, and I know we have lots of those around the state and that's a great thing to do. It's an excellent opportunity for people to socialize. And you can check out the American Community Garden Association. They often have locators, so you can go and look around where they're located. But it's a time to get together, interact. Everybody likes to show off their plants or maybe share plants. You can learn a lot from people. And I certainly in my work with volunteering with master gardeners, we've certainly seen a lot of people that enjoy getting together and jointly deadheading all those flowers. So they stay beautiful on the campus of NDSU. And if you have never checked out NDSU's gardens on the edge of campus, right on 12th Avenue in the late summer, early fall, just beautiful. So check those out. See lots of different options. Whenever I go there, I want more flowers to add to my garden. So when you garden socially, it also increases your level of compassion because when you're caring for nature, it's like you're caring for a human or a pet. It increases your concern and empathy when this comes from the literature and it helps you appreciate the environment as a whole. So you feel more compassionate toward others and that's a very good thing. So in terms of work performance, if you're really having a bad day or too much going on and you wanna reinvigorate yourself, it's just good to get outside, walk around and enjoy that increase in energy and vitality. And then you can come back in your office, you're invigorated, put that energy into your work and you've got to improve state of mind. So just a good thing to do, get out into nature. You're having a mental block, you're trying to do your taxes or whatever you're trying to do. Just get away from it and enjoy it. It's kind of cold out right now, but it's getting better. So some other things to think about that have come from the world of architecture, landscape architecture, beautifully landscape areas are associated with a higher quality of life and that attracts businesses and opportunities. I'd love to be walking down this path where this person is in the picture. It enhances the outlook of the whole community. So you see, you go into some communities and they're just beautiful with all the plants and flowers and different colored foliage. So really fun to enjoy. This was kind of interesting. This is on a traffic level. And believe it or not, having some aesthetics, some plants along roadways or in the median, for example, helps drivers be more at ease and they think more positively about the community. And if there's a landscaped area between oncoming lanes of traffic, like trees, drivers are much less likely to accidentally drive over the median. So if you're having a problem with that, try to get some plants going. So this comes from the world of traffic. Transportation. Other researchers have shown that neighborhoods that have beautiful parks are less likely to have a higher crime rate. So people have a higher degree of pride where they live and they're less likely to do things that detract from their community. So I think we're gonna see an ongoing interest in improved forestry and more trees and all that type of thing, more parks, just because it enhances the entire community. It makes it much more beautiful, much more likely that people wanna live there and take care of it. And there's also a feeling of community cohesion. That means that we're more tightly knit. We come together to clean up and beautify our neighborhoods and it can increase activism to make the place better, make our community better. And often there's a fight to keep green spaces in communities because people want a place to gather. It makes it much more friendly. Think, oh, there we go. There's also a ripple effect. So as if one community does a beautiful job of beautifying their area with gardening and putting planters out and all this, we often see a copycat effect. So other sectors will follow suit and adjacent communities see this and they feel forced to upgrade due to this competitive factor. They want people to come and shop in their stores and live in their neighborhoods. So this ripple effect actually is a good thing. It's good for all of us. Well, we've reached the end and I have a little time for questions but I wanted to say a couple of things. I mentioned Sally Yakowitz. She helped research the gardening and health information and C.C. Wayne made my PowerPoint look prettier. So I thank both of them for their help on this. And with that, you can go ahead, if you have questions, go ahead and type them in the chat box. And don't forget to complete the survey and they'll be emailed directly to you. So does anyone feel a little more motivated to garden because of health? I see Suzanne Driesen said, is there any research on community gardens and health? We did not come upon that but I would guess Suzanne that that is something that's in the works because there's such an interest in community gardens. URL for my blog. If you simply search, well actually my blog appears on the area voices site on the inform, inform.com and you just go to area voices and my blog is called Prairie Fair or and it also shows up and I'll type it in here quickly. If I can figure out how to do that. This is our website, which is really a gateway website. You'll see the column and the blog appear at NDSU.edu slash food, the egg in the front. And I mentioned a couple of things. There's a health wise for guys site that might be interesting to you and also our nourishing exercise, your body site with all that information about body system health. Is the seed citizen science project still on? I don't think I know what that is. There is a seed, I think I saw Dean Ocrian here. I believe that Tom Kelb is, and Bismarck is doing some of the projects related to providing packets and seeds. And I think in the Fargo Moorhead area, there's also, yeah, so Tom Kelb is still doing that. So you can reach out to tom.kelb at NDSU.edu. And then for the past few years in the Fargo area, at least they've been giving out some seed packets as part of a local community coalition. And Sharon asks, what about artificial plants in the office? Same effect, I don't know if they've studied that, but I would say, I don't think I could say anything because I don't know. I would expect that more than natural plants would have the better health effect. I know that a lot of interior designers only want real, like real plants. I know we can buy a lot of fake ones, but the ones that I've been around really like the real ones. So that's where we're seeing a lot of the real cactus showing up. Fruit orchard gardening is good, too. Someone mentions, so please go ahead, check out all the resources we have. And if you see things that, gee, I wish you guys had this, drop me an email. I want to just go type my email in here real quick. And feel free to reach out. Yes, now Dean makes a good comment. I assume there's an oxygen effect with real plants would not be there with artificial plants, yeah, definitely. We bring in a lot of plants in my house and I have geraniums that my grandmother had. She died in 1940 and these geranium plants have been passed down through the generations and my husband's been helping me keep these going for all these years that we've been married as well. So I really see that you can tie generations to generations with plants. I hope I can keep these geraniums going and give some to my kids as well. I never knew my grandmother and it's kind of fun to have these plants that I know that she took care of. You know, the earlier cousins to the plants that I have. So any other questions for me? I really wanna thank you for participating and for those of you who have been loyally coming almost every week. Now that's why we keep doing these. So if you think of topics that you really wanna know more about, certainly, you know, write that when you do your survey, which I hope you do, let us know, cause I'll be planning these in the future as well. So thank you very much for joining us today and we hope to see you next week and Cliff will be our speaker.