Street vegetation is an important component of urban green space which plays a crucial role in promoting human well-being. To examine the impact of different types of street vegetation on individuals’ mental health, we presented two types of four street vegetation scenes in the real environment, concerning the form and species. One type consisted of random shrubs and regular shrubs. The other type consists of trees with single species and trees with diverse species. Forty participants took part in an experimental design to evaluate psychological and physiological changes before and after exposure to the street vegetation using the measures of EEG, HRV and eye movement. Our results identified that exposure to street vegetation enhanced alpha brain activity and reduced the HRV. In addition, eye movement was used to enhance restorative effects. The effect of different types of street vegetation varied significantly. It indicated that regular shrubs had a more positive effect on measures of relaxation compared with the random shrubs. The type of street vegetation of trees with diverse species had a more positive effect on measures of relaxation than the type of single species. The POMS scores of the regular shrubs decreased compared to the random shrubs and the diverse species decreased compared to the single species. The ROS scores of the regular and diverse types are higher than the random and single. The study suggests that the type manual-pruned street vegetation and the type of trees combined with plant diversity are generally more favorable in enhancing subjective comfort in the street vegetation. These findings underscore the importance of form and species in landscape planning and design to promote relaxation and comfort in the urban street environment.
Wang et al. (Fri,) studied this question.