Urban Forest Therapy: Linking Human Health, Microbial Diversity, and Pollinator Services

The integration of Traditional, Complementary, and Integrative Medicine (TCIM) into modern healthcare promotes patient-centered, holistic healing through nature-based interventions. Forest therapy has emerged as a preventive practice linking environmental and medical sciences, inducing relaxation, supporting immunity, and improving mental health. This review identified publications from 2021 to 2026 across PubMed on forest therapy and health outcomes, including 1,186 for cardiovascular (22 directly relevant), 960 for mental health (42 selected for review), and 5,735 for oncology (3 directly relevant), to summarize evidence on forest healing and its adaptation to urban environments. This review summarizes evidence-based findings on forest healing and its potential adaptation to urban environments and it’s indicators, where access to green spaces is limited. Although clinical data on forest therapy are well established, revisiting it reinforces the essential role of biodiverse ecosystems in sustaining human health. Patient-centered practices such as forest therapy extend conventional treatment, offering ecological pathways to recovery and resilience. Ensuring proximity to biodiverse green areas as forests, parks, or “healing gardens” can enhance accessibility and public health. Emerging research highlights biological mechanisms underlying forest therapy, including soil microorganisms like Mycobacterium vaccae , which modulate immunity and mood. Pollinator-based indicators, particularly wild bee abundance and diversity, function as integrative measures of ecosystem integrity, multisensory landscape quality, and resilience of urban green infrastructure. The incorporation of microbial biodiversity and pollinator-supportive design into urban planning can therefore be evaluated through composite sustainability indicators that reflect co-benefits for human well-being, ecological sustainability, and adaptive capacity of human–natural systems. Overall, this review demonstrates that integrating forest therapy principles with urban biodiversity planning can transform cities into multifunctional, health-promoting ecosystems, providing evidence-based guidance for environmental management and policy.