Green roof boosts concentration

Don't grab a coffee for that concentration boost, just glance out the window at a city roof garden.

Students who glanced at an image of a flowering meadow green roof in the middle of a boring task, did much better than those who looked at a bare concrete roof picture, a study has found.

The University of Melbourne research, published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, involved 150 students pressing numbers repeatedly flashed on a computer screen, unless it was the number three.

Midway through the task, they had a 40-second break when half looked at the green roof and the rest at the concrete one.

The first group made significantly less errors and showed superior concentration on the rest of the task compared to the others, said lead researcher Dr Kate Lee.

The green roof boosted the mental resources controlling attention. So just a moment of green could provide a boost for tired workers, she said.

"We know that green roofs are great for the environment but now we can say that they boost attention too," she said.

Dr Lee, who is studying the way green space can be incorporated into cities, said green roofs can improve the quality of lives particularly when there's not enough space for parks.

The implications of the study for city office workers and residents add extra impetus to greening our cities, she said.