Horticulturists can be effective researchers in this non- traditional area by working as members of an interdisciplinary research team with psychologists, sociologists, geographers, historians, urban planners, and others from the social sciences. Well-designed research could explain the benefits that people perceive they are gaining from plants and their motivation to buy plants or participate in gardening activities. Additional studies of the significance of environmental improvement through interior and exterior landscaping will be important in marketing activities. Increasing Property Value - Weyerhauser reports that home owners perceive good landscaping increases property value. Bestowing Social Benefits - Plants and landscaping provide many social benefits ranging from opportunities for social interchanges to forms of subtle competition.
Plants provide a quiet calm in the chaos of high-tech life.
Insight into this preventative therapy could lead to the development of more public parks or to new gardeners taking time out from the rat race by spending their lunch time in the corporate gardens weeding, mulching, and harvesting flowers or vegetables. The research could focus not only on muscle development and calorie use, but on blood pressure and heart rate. There are undoubtedly many other factors which play a role in motivating people to be involved in the care and culture of plants or even the passive enjoyment of plants. Understanding these motivational factors has an obvious value in market development. Another area of research in the relationship between people and plants that may not have an immediately obvious link to market development is the value of plants in changing human behavior.