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LAST week, during what already feels like the halcyon days of Before Lockdown, a wonderful package came through my letterbox. It contained the , which lists the UK capital鈥檚 50 most interesting trees. Did you know there is a ? Or a yew in Totteridge that has been there ? I was planning to visit them all. That will now have to wait.

I have written before about London鈥檚 green spaces and its status as a national city park. One of the pleasures of living here is the wealth of urban nature on our doorsteps. I miss it.

This isn鈥檛 just the frustration of enforced confinement because of the coronavirus. A ton of research tells us that contact with nature has significant health benefits. Luckily, there are a few simple tricks you can use to get some of the benefits of nature while sticking to the rules about social isolation.

Here is why it is so important. Last year, a study found that spending just 2 hours a week in green spaces boosts physical and mental well-being by about the same amount as getting enough exercise.

There are other positives to be had. People who take time to connect with nature are more likely to engage in pro-environmental behaviour and care about the natural world. Many have found this link, and now .

The study recruited more than 24,000 adults in England and asked how much contact they had with nature. The researchers also asked about pro-environmental behaviours including recycling, buying eco-friendly products, walking or cycling and belonging to green groups.

They found that the more often people visited nature for recreation, the greater their pro-environmental behaviour and appreciation of the natural world.

Of course, this is correlation not causation. Maybe people who are already environmentally conscious spend more time in contact with nature. But the researchers also found a positive correlation between people鈥檚 passive exposure to nature through their neighbourhoods and pro-environmental behaviour.

鈥淟ast year, a study found that spending just 2 hours a week in green spaces boosts physical and mental well-being鈥�

Again, you can鈥檛 rule out the possibility that green-minded people choose to live in greener areas. But, as the researchers point out, people mainly choose where to live based on other factors such as work, schools and transport. Lead author Ian Alcock at the University of Exeter Medical School, UK, says the results suggest that access to nature is a solution to our environmental problems.

The opposite is also true: other research indicates that nature deprivation makes people less willing to behave sustainably. Worryingly, the effects are long-lasting. Adults who didn鈥檛 have much contact with the natural world as children lead generally less green lives.

Lockdown is therefore a potential problem not just for our mental and physical health, but also for the well-being of the natural world, now and into the future.

My patch of London is already quite low on green space and, ironically, going car-free has exacerbated my disconnect from nature. But I am very lucky that I have a patch of greenery on my doorstep; as the lockdown grinds on, I will spend time in the back garden. My working from home desk looks out onto it and I dare say I am getting more contact with greenery than I do 鈥� did? 鈥� in the office.

But I appreciate that many city dwellers don鈥檛 have this luxury. The obvious solution is to do your permitted daily bout of exercise in as natural a setting as you can. Run, walk or cycle to your nearest bit of green and run, walk or cycle around it.

If that isn鈥檛 possible, there is another way to dose up. It turns out that you don鈥檛 actually have to go into nature to reap the benefits. Experiments have shown that photographs, videos and audio recordings 鈥撯�濃�� 鈥� have a similar though less powerful effect. Good results have also been reported with .

So here is a tip for getting through this. If you don鈥檛 have easy access to the natural world, look at pictures of it; watch natural history programmes; listen to recordings of birdsong and other natural soundscapes on Spotify.

And when it is all over, go back out into nature and reflect on what we lose when it is no longer there. Many people I have spoken to in recent days regard this hiatus as an opportunity for a period of reflection, a chance to rethink our out-of-kilter world.

Part of this has to be a new relationship with nature. Our health and happiness depend on it.