Did you know that one gram of soil can harbour up to 10 billion organisms? That's more than the number of people living on the planet! Soils store more carbon than the atmosphere, and all of the world’s plants and forests combined… but every minute we lose the equivalent of 30 football pitches of fertile soil.1
I’ve been thinking about soil a lot lately. Firstly, because I have an allotment, and I’ve come to realise over the last year or so that soil health is fundamental to producing healthy crops. When we took on the allotment, I was adamant we needed to utilise ‘no dig’ methods and disturb the earth as little as possible. But it soon became clear this wouldn’t work for us, at least for the time being. We realised we’d need vast amounts of compost (at vast expense) to do this with every bed on our plot. And after a frankly ridiculous mission that saw us climbing over fences and pushing a wheelbarrow up and down a steep hill for a measly amount of questionable (free) horse manure, we decided to just buy a small amount of peat-free compost to dig into the beds we’d managed to clear. Our plan is to focus on creating our own compost and, hopefully, introduce some no-dig beds in the future, so we can test out what works best on our plot. What we did commit to was rejecting any kind of synthetic or chemical fertilisers and we’re trying to garden organically. I’ve been exploring various permaculture methods and experimenting with companion planting - to varying success. The birds, bugs and beasties eat a lot of what we produce, but I don’t mind sharing some around.

I still have absolutely no idea what I am doing, and as satisfying as I find preparing beds for my seedlings, I do find myself feeling a bit guilty about messing with the soil. Each time I dig up a worm or a millipede - or a ground-nesting bee like I did the other day - I apologise and try to ensure they’re either put back where they came from or relocated to a lovely new home (which has, at times, accidentally been the stomach of our resident robin… IT’S THE CIIIIIRCCCCLLLLE etc etc).
SOIL: The world at our feet
I’ve also been thinking about soil because last week I visited SOIL: The world at our feet, an exhibition at Somerset House in London. If you are reading this and wondering how soil could possibly be interesting - or even inspiring - go and see this show. It’s a feast for the senses!
Here are a few of my favourite things from the exhibition..
Photographer Wim van Egmond’s Soil in Action was a piece of art you could truly immerse yourself in. Step inside and you’ll be surrounded by a compilation of time-lapses showing seed germination, root growth, symbiosis between plants and fungi, plants and bacteria and decomposition in compost. The accompanying soundtrack, One Hour as Peyote by Michael Allen Z Prime, was produced by connecting electrodes to the roots and stem of a living specimen of Lophophora williamsii, the peyote cactus. I can’t even begin to describe the sound, but you can listen to it here.
I particularly enjoyed Wim van Egmond’s words to accompany the piece:
“When I started as a photographer I put a lot of effort in trying to turn reality into abstract images. Nowadays I consider myself a realist, but because my subjects are so unknown they appear more abstract than ever."
Another example of the simple beauty of nature reimagined as a piece of art was herman de vries’ from earth: kreta. Since the early 1970s, the artist has collected thousands of soil samples from across the world and rubbed them onto paper. Each of the 48 samples currently on display at Somerset House were taken from one small island - Crete - and yet each one is so different.
I don’t have photos of the next two, so you’ll have to go to the exhibition to see them, but Reverse Sod Swap by Mike Perry was a playful and poignant piece of work that challenges the idea of 'wildness'. Mike reversed the original Sod Swap, which saw artist David Nash bring a ring of wild North Wales turf to the pristine lawn of The Serpentine Gallery in West London for The British Sculpture Show in 1983. A botanist counted 27 species in the Welsh turf and only three in the London turf.
In his 2024 piece, with Nash's support, Mike Perry reversed the process, swapping a piece of 'wilded' turf from Springfield Park in Hackney, East London with a piece of sheep-mown turf from farmland in West Wales. This time, botanists counted 39 species in the urban turf and four in the rural turf, “highlighting the contrast between the enlightened rewilding of our urban parks and the decades of biodiversity loss in our National Parks, landscapes commonly celebrated for their "Outstanding Natural Beauty’”.
Mike said:
"I wanted to challenge the idea of 'wildness' as something only found in the countryside, when in fact our rural environments are fast becoming worn-out industrial landscapes. By reversing David's Sod Swap of 42 years ago, I hope to make the point that much of this degradation has happened, within my lifetime."
Another memorable video from SOIL was Marshmallow Laser Feast’s Fly Agaric I, which creates a window into the unseen world beneath our feet, focusing on the symbiosis between plants and fungi. Magical, dreamlike images of an Amanita muscaria and mycorrhizal networks beneath the soil are accompanied by the words and voice of mycologist and author Merlin Sheldrake.
“The word ecology has its roots in the Greek work for home or household”, Merlin tells us in the video. And if we are to look after our home - our earth - we could learn a thing or two from the natural world. We’re stronger, and more effective, if we work together.
SOIL: The world at our feet is on at Somerset House in London until 13th April.
Noticing Nature Task
Your task this week is to learn about soil. Read these fascinating facts about soil, visit the Somerset House exhibition or just go and get grubby outside!
Join the Great British Spring Clean
The Great British Spring Clean and Great Big School Clean 2025 will take place from 21 March to 6 April, and you can pledge to pick up a bag of litter – or more – now.
Guard those worms with your life Zabby... We dug a big new plot (when I say 'we', a very good friend with a mini-digger did most of the job...) for tatties last week and found 2 worms. We live in what is legendarily the stoniest part of Scotland, if not the whole planet, and it seems the poor old worms don't like it. I'm hoping that they might be encouraged to join me here in force once I have somewhat enriched the soil. Apparently the devil didn't know what to do with all the excess stone he had after creating the world (?!) and decided to dump it in a small, carefully-chosen part of Dumfries and Galloway, otherwise known as my garden!!!
On a more serious note, anyone interested in improving/not destroying our precious earth should watch 'Six Inches of Soil' - inspirational and informative.