WHY SOIL?
The Soil Association is the charity that digs deeper to support a brighter future by transforming the way we care for our natural world. Since 1946, they’ve been helping everyone join forces with nature for the health of soil, animals, people and the planet.
Blue Diamond is the UK’s premier garden centre group with 44 centres across the UK and Channel Islands. It owns a 75-acre nursery which grows and supplies plants exclusively for the Group. It also has its own brand of Fryer’s Roses and is the proud owner of Bridgemere Show Gardens, a 6-acre collection of award-winning show gardens, including RHS Chelsea Gold medal winning gardens, which has just been awarded RHS Partner Garden status.
Why soil?
Soil is the superhero under our feet. It stores more carbon than the atmosphere and all of the world’s plants and forests combined. This means that soil is one of our
most important weapons in the fight against climate change!
Soil is important for nature and biodiversity too. It nurtures and gives home to billions of species, above and below ground - just one gram of soil (a quarter of a tablespoon) can harbour up to 10 billion organisms.
95% of our food production relies on the soil. Like water, soil is essential to life on earth. Together, we must encourage everybody to protect it for nature, planet,
and people.
Get involved to help our soil
Around 87% of UK households have a garden. That’s over 10 million acres, which is larger than all of Britain’s nature reserves combined and doesn’t even include allotments! This means that if we all commit to more nature-friendly gardening, we can have a massive impact on the biodiversity and soil health of the nation.
The Soil Association and Blue Diamond Garden Centres have put together a host of resources to encourage and assist you to become nature-friendly gardeners.
Download our digital nature-friendly gardening guide by scanning this QR code
Soil Saviours
We want to encourage children to get involved in gardening too; children are our next generation of Soil Saviours!
Why not get young and old together and have a go at planting strawberry plants, whether in a pair of old wellies or anything else you can upcycle!
You can download a Strawberry Wellies action pack (among others) for guidance, including how to make the activity more inclusive, from https://www.fflgettogethers.org/
