When Nature became the villain

Why do so many of us feel disconnected from nature? It’s not just city life or busy schedules.

For centuries, culture has shaped the way we relate to the natural world, often by distancing us from it. From fairy tales that painted forests as places of fear to ad campaigns that prized tidy lawns over biodiversity, culture has quietly trained us to see nature as scary, chaotic, or something “out there.”

Fairy tales have one thing in common: don’t go into the woods! For centuries, we were told that forests are dark, dangerous, and full of monsters.

But in reality? Forests are medicine, memory, and refuge.

SUGi reimagines cities, where people and nature live side by side, by creating ultra-dense, biodiverse pocket forests of native species. These spaces offer more than environmental impact: they provide calm, safety, and a place for people to gather and reconnect with the natural world.

We need to learn to live alongside nature again, not apart from it.