BBC Gardeners' World

The science of soil

The scientific understanding of how plants interact with the soil has come on in leaps and bounds in the last few decades.

Finally, we understand how plants obtain nutrients using the life in the soil, and what’s in it for the soil life, too. These days, the soil is considered so critical for plant health that it has been labelled as the plant’s ‘external gut’. Nature’s elegant solution, practised and perfected over aeons, is only now giving up its secrets.

For us, understanding the relationship between plants and the soil can drastically alter how we look at our garden and our gardening practices.

 quietly and effortlessly growing healthy plants for

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