Falzon and Conrad examine nature-based learning through the material specificity of the environments in which it occurs. Their review is especially valuable because it refuses to treat “nature” as a generic positive variable: the central question is how particular spatial characteristics enable or constrain learning, wellbeing and nature connectedness. The conceptual operation is relational. Drawing on ecological psychology and affordance theory, learning emerges from transactions between people and environments rather than from exposure to scenery alone. This makes design pedagogically consequential: access, complexity, multisensoriality, vegetation, spatial limitation and the possibilities for action offered by a site become part of the learning apparatus. The review also highlights significant evidential gaps, especially in dense urban contexts and across diverse cultural and geographical settings. Its bridge to environmental psychology is precise: educational outcomes depend on person–environment relations that are simultaneously functional, affective and spatial. Nature-based learning therefore becomes a question of how environments invite attention, action, attachment and interpretation.
