Plants, complexity, and pleasure in urban and suburban environments

This paper describes results of an experiment investigating the role of plant materials in affecting human response to the environment. Six pairs of photographic slides, representing five different urban or suburban landscape contexts (residential, industrial, urban commercial, stirp high way, and park) were selected—one without plants and one with plants. Other variables were held constant for each pair of slides. Groups of 10 to 15 subjects evaluated each slide for pleasure and complexity. For each pair of slides, scores of pleasure and complexity were compared using thet-test for independence of means. Results indicate that while plants generally increase pleasurable response to all landscape contexts, a hypothesized inverted U-shaped function between pleasure and complexity across the five landscape contexts was not adequately supported. The relationship between symbolic/associational affects and complexity affects of plants is discussed.