Archive record · Capability record · 2000s · International
Soil is alive, and treating it that way is a professional discipline. This record rebuilds a soil health briefing preserved in the files of the company's Dubai project work, where landscapes are built on sand and every one of soil's functions has to be created rather than assumed. Its core idea has guided our soil thinking ever since: soil health has three facets, and improving only one of them is never enough.
The three facets
- Physical structure: in a healthy soil the particles cluster into aggregates called peds, with large spaces between them. Enough water stable aggregates and the soil drains freely through the big pores while holding moisture inside the small ones, which is how one soil can improve drainage and water retention at the same time.
- Chemical status: a healthy soil holds nutrients rather than leaking them. The briefing points to improved nutrient holding capacity, measured as cation exchange capacity, a reduced tendency for pH to swing when fertilisers are applied, reduced leaching of nitrates, and increased availability of nutrients including nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, copper, zinc, iron, manganese, calcium and magnesium.
- Biological activity: the productivity of a soil is in direct proportion to the number, activity and balance of its micro organisms. Researchers have calculated that a spadeful of biologically active soil holds more units of life than there are people on the face of the earth. Those organisms convert nitrogen into useable forms and facilitate the uptake of phosphorus, sulphur, boron and molybdenum, and what they need most is food and space to grow in.
One facet is never enough
Most agricultural and horticultural soil amendments address a single aspect of soil health: a fertiliser changes only the chemical nature of the soil, and gypsum addresses only physical problems. The argument of this briefing, demonstrated by replicated trials, is that managing all three facets together is what moves results: increased root mass, improved colour in vegetables and turf, greater resistance to insect and fungal attack, organic carbon rising over time, and in strawberry trials, recorded yield increases of up to 27 percent.
Why this record matters
Desert landscaping succeeds or fails below the surface. Sand can be made into living soil, but only by building structure, chemistry and biology together, and that principle now sits under every planting scheme we advise on. See the species that reward that groundwork in our desert landscaping range.
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