About environment empathy

Environmental empathy, although still need more clear definition, seems already exsiting in somewhere of our environmental cognition. When people say I feel great when I see the trees grow strong and health, doesn't it a like of empathy? Although we do not really know the "happiness" of the trees, but seems the mirror in our mind feels the happiness. Can these feelings extent to a landscape, a region, even to the earth? If it does, how large of our mind mirror can cantain? Furthermore, can we apply this as an professional ethic of the profession of landacpe architecture? What is the professional ethic of a landscape architecture?