Recent findings that spelled good news for the landscape industry:

A University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine study showed that urban residents' heart rates were reduced when they walked by areas that had been greened up. An earlier study on the positive effects of green spaces found that people living near vacant lots that had been landscaped felt safer than those who lived near lots that had not.

While researching the factors that determined the difference between the tiny fruit produced by early, wild tomato plants and one-pound beefsteaks, scientists at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory discovered a new way that plant breeders can genetically fine-tune growth.
nature.com/ng/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ng.3309.html

In a positive sign for bee colony health, Keith Delaplane at the University of Georgia, and Dennis vanEngelsdorp of the University of Maryland discovered that beekeepers who split their surviving colonies and started new ones see the number of bees go back up again, which helped the U.S. bee population increase by almost four percent in the last year.