Soil

Soil is loose material that lies on top of the land. It is a mixture of many different things including minerals, organic matter, water and gas.

A typical soil is about 50% solids (45% mineral and 5% organic matter), and 50% voids of which half is occupied by water and half by gas.

Because soil holds water and nutrients, it is an ideal place for plants to grow.

A, B, and C in the picture below represent the soil profile, a notation firstly coined by Vasily Dokuchaev, the father of pedology; A is the topsoil; B is a regolith; C is a saprolite, a less-weathered regolith; the bottom-most layer represents the bedrock.

By Carlosblh -  Wikipedia

The Romans believed that the smell of freshly turned soil was so beneficial and wholesome for invalids that they put clods of earth into their beds to help revive their spirits.

In ancient Egypt pigs were kept as scavengers. They loosened the soil by their rooting and so prepared it for planting.

The Amazon Rainforest area originally had terrible farming soil, until indigenous people invented a "superdirt" which remains fertile for thousands of years, renews and propagates by itself, and may currently cover as much as 10% of the Amazon basin.

Gilbert White (1720-93) was a British naturalist and clergyman. His classic Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1788) gave detailed descriptions, in an elegantly literary style, of wildlife and nature, including the important function of the humble earthworm in turning earth into fertile soil.

George Washington allegedly said before his death that he, "would never set foot on English soil again," so when they erected a statue of him in London, they put US soil under the statue to honor that claim.

World Soil Day (WSD) is held annually on December 5 as a means to focus attention on the importance of healthy soil and to advocate for the sustainable management of soil resources.

An international day to celebrate Soil was recommended by the International Union of Soil Sciences (IUSS) in 2002. The Food and Agriculture Organization Conference unanimously endorsed World Soil Day in June 2013 and requested its official adoption at the 68th UN General Assembly. In December 2013, the UN General Assembly responded by designating December 5, 2014 as the first official World Soil Day.

The date of December 5 was chosen for World Soil Day because it corresponds with the official birthday of the late H.M. King Bhumibol Adulyadej, King of Thailand, who was one of the main proponents of this initiative.

A local folk remedy in Boho, Ireland was to place soil from the local church under a pillow while you slept to cure infections. In 2018 a microbiologist found the churchyard's soil contains a previously unknown strain of streptomyces which can be used to create antibiotics.

The soil in your back garden is two million years old.

Pixiebay

Soil contains sedimentary DNA—the leftovers of dead plants and animals, and sloughed-off skin, hair and feathers of living ones.

It takes as much as 1,000 years to form one centimeter of soil—and the Earth is losing soil at the rate of 30 soccer fields per minute.

1m² of soil can hold a billion living things, including insects, spiders, worms, centipedes, fungi, and tens of thousands of bacteria.

There are 10,000,000,000 bacteria in a gram of soil.

The average fully detached American home has about two tonnes of earthworms crawling through the soil in the yard.

Close up of an earthworm in garden soil. Wikipedia

Soil is one of two main components of Earth — the other being oceans — where life is active. Human life depends on healthy soil.

Soil is not a renewable resource. Human life depends on healthy soil, just like it depends on clean air and clean water, but losses of soil cannot be regained within a lifetime.

The orange color of the soil on the island of Ibiza comes from the tannin in the pine needles that fall from its many pine trees.

The Earth's name comes from the Anglo-Saxon word erda which means ground or soil.

The soil on Mars is perfect for growing asparagus.

Source UN

Shed

A shed is typically a simple, single-story roofed structure in a back garden or on an allotment that is used for storage.  Some sheds are large structures framed by wood and others are made out of plastic or metal. At times, people use their shed to do hobbies or as a workshop.

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The word 'shed' is recorded in English since 1481, as 'shadde,' possibly a variant of
'shade'. In Anglo-Saxon times a 'scead' was a place of rest in a shady place.

Depending on the region and type of use, a shed may also be called an "outhouse", "outbuilding" or "shack".

Rudyard Kipling, George Benard Shaw, Agatha Christie and Roald Dahl all wrote in their sheds.

George Bernard Shaw called his writing shed. It was located in his garden at Shaw’s Corner in Ayot St Lawrence, Hertfordshire. The idea was that unwanted visitors to his home could be honestly told by staff that he was in London.

George Bernard Shaw's writing shed. By PaulSkin from UK - Shaw's Corner7, 

A shed the English composer Benjamin Britten owned is now a Grade 2 listed building.

In 1914 at the outbreak of the First World War, to handle post for the army, the British Post office put up a wooden structure in Regents Park, London, which has been described as "the world's largest shed".

US engineer Wilson Greatbatch built the first reliable implantable pacemaker in his garden shed. He tested a prototype on a dog in 1958 and, in 1960, 77-year-old Henry Hannafield, became the first human recipient.

26 per cent of male shed owners say they spend time in their sheds to get away from their partner.

Garden shed with gambrel roof. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikipedia

There are about 12 million sheds in Britain.

In New Zealand, the bi-monthly magazine The Shed is bought by men who do woodwork or metalwork DIY projects in their sheds.

The Australian Men's Shed Association is an organisation for shed hobbyists.

Source Daily Express

Lawn mower

The first lawn mower was invented by farmer's son and textile mill laborer Edwin Budding in 1830 in Thrupp, just outside Stroud, in Gloucestershire, England. Inspired by rotary machines used to trim velvet, he joined forces with the businessman John Ferrabee to build a self-powered cylinder. Budding was granted a British patent on August 31, 1830.

An early cylinder (reel) mower,

Budding's first mower was 19 inches wide, had a box that collected the clippings as they were thrown forward by the blades and allowed the user to adjust the height of the cut. The mower changed little in design until after World War II.

The first person known to have bought a lawnmower was a Mr Curtis, head gardener of Regent's Park Zoo, who paid 210 shillings for a Ferabee machine in 1831.

As well as the Royal Zoological Society, Oxford colleges were also among the first to use Budding's lawn mower. Its popularity spread as more British homes came to have gardens. As the lawn mower's popularity spread and made lawns more affordable, sports that were played on grass, such as cricket, football and rugby, were given better playing surfaces.

The first Wimbledon championship was held in 1877 to raise money for repairs to the All-England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club's pony-drawn lawn roller. Entrants had to pay a guinea (£1.05) each.

Automobile manufacturer Ransom E. Olds (1864-1950)  invented the power lawn mower in 1914.
In 1897 he'd opened the Olds Motor Vehicle Company and started building there four years later he first mass-produced automobile, the Oldsmobile Curved Dash. In 1915, after a softening in the auto market, Olds formed the Ideal Power Lawn Mower Company to manufacture his newest invention.

A Baptist, Olds' philanthropies included establishing an interdenominational home for retired ministers in Daytona Beach, Florida.

The prototype flymo was a dustbin lid with an engine stuck on it.

During one bender in 1966, country singer George Jones' wife tried to curb her husband's drinking by hiding their car keys so he couldn't get to the nearest bar, which was eight miles away. Undeterred, Jones found the key was still in the ignition of his sit-on lawnmower, so set off at 5 mph before being pulled over by the police.

A 73-year-old almost blind man, Alvin Straight, was unable to get a drivers license due to his eyesight. Instead, he drove his John Deere lawn mower 240 miles from northwestern Iowa to southwestern Wisconsin to visit his ailing 80-year-old brother, Henry.

In 1995 a gardener in Norway was the first man to be convicted of drunken driving whilst in charge of a lawnmower as he drove one between two gardens.

Mowing lawns on Sundays and holidays is a punishable offense in Germany. German law forbids making excessive noise on Sundays and holidays, as well as from 10PM to 7AM on weekdays.

Mowing American lawns uses 800 million gallons of gas every year. This is a significant amount of energy and resources, and it has a negative impact on the environment.

The shape of a lawn mowers blade creates lift which forces the grass to stick up, making it much easier to be cut by the next blade.

Sources The Independent,  Europress Family Encyclopedia 1999

Lawn

Traditional grass lawns originated as a status symbol for the wealthy. Neatly cut lawns used solely for aesthetics became a status symbol as it demonstrated that the owner could afford to maintain grass that didn’t serve purposes of food production.

Before the invention of the lawn mower in 1830, lawns were maintained by the grazing of horses and sheep. Only the very wealthy could afford to pay teams of scythe-wielding laborers to keep their pristine lawns in check.

President Woodrow Wilson kept a flock of sheep on the White House lawn. He sold the wool and gave the money to the Red Cross.

It takes eight hours to mow the White House lawns . Gardeners mow them twice a week to the precise level of 2½ inches.

More than 50% of water applied to lawns is lost to evaporation or run-off due to overwatering.

Mowing your lawn every two weeks, instead of every week, increases bee populations by 30 percent.

Lawns take up nearly two percent of the surface of the continental United States, making turf grass—not corn—America’s largest irrigated crop.

In the United States, pink plastic flamingo statues are popular lawn ornaments. In fact there are more fake flamingos in the world than real flamingos.

Source The Independent

Greenhouse

In ancient Rome, Roman gardeners grew cucumbers in frames covered with oiled cloth or with sheets of mica. They were the first greenhouses.

Early greenhouses were built in Italy in the 13th century to house the exotic plants that explorers brought back from the tropics. They were originally called giardini botanici (botanical gardens).

The world's first modern style greenhouse was built in 1714 to protect a single delicate coffee plant given as a gift to King Louis XIV of France. Lovingly tended, it becomes the parent stock of most of the coffee grown in Latin America today.

The great glasshouse in the National Botanical Garden of Wales, Carmarthenshire, is the largest single-span greenhouse in the world, measuring 312ft in length and 180ft in width.

Gnome

Gnomes are tiny, shaped like humans, with long beards. They were first introduced by Swiss alchemist Paracelsus in the 16th century and later adopted by more recent authors including those of modern fantasy literature.

Sir Charles Isham (1819-1903), a landowner based at Lamport Hall, Northampton is credited with beginning the tradition of garden gnomes in the United Kingdom when he introduced a number of terracotta figures from Nuremberg, Germany in 1847.

Isham was a vegetarian spiritualist who hoped that they would lure real gnomes in to his garden.

Lampy is the only one of Isham's garden gnomes still in existence. There had been 21 of them, but Isham's daughter hated them and tried to remove them all. She missed one of them.

Today, Lampy is on display at Lamport Hall. It is insured for £1 million.

A replica of Lampy the Lamport gnome. Wikipedia

These figurines were known at the time in Germany, as Gartenzwerge (garden dwarfs). The application of the term gnome in English is first attested in the 1930s.

Gnomes a 1976 Dutch book about the life of gnomes remained on U.S. non-fiction best-seller lists for more than a year after it was translated into English.

1967 saw David Bowie release a novelty single, "The Laughing Gnome,", which many fans argue is the worst song he has ever recorded.

In 1990, Bowie announced the set list for his Sound+Vision Tour would be decided by telephone voting. The music magazine, NME, attempted to rig the voting so "The Laughing Gnome," was the most requested. He didn't play it.

Gnomes are banned from the gardens at the Chelsea Flower Show

Gardening

The peaceful hobby of King Merodach-Baladan II, who ruled Babylonia from  722 BC--710 BC, and 703 BC--702 BC was horticulture. In his royal gardens he cultivated sixty-four different species of plants.

King Merodach-Baladan II created the world’s first written dissertation on vegetable gardens, with explicit instructions concerning the cultivation of a long list of  spices and herbs including coriander, garlic, saffron and thyme.

Ruralia Commoda, a  manual written in Latin between 1304 and 1309 contains a host of great gardening tips - including advising readers that squash will bear fruit after nine days, but only if planted in the ashes of human bone and watered with oil.

Ruralia Commoda also suggests cucumbers shake with fear at the sound of thunder, and planting ingredients including a radish and lettuce seed inside a ball of goat manure will result in tasty lettuces.

A gardener at work, 1607

It wasn't until the mid 19th century that ornamental gardening on a domestic scale came in for the lower classes. Rockeries, heated conservatories and geometric displays of brightly colored bedding plants were to the Victorians what bedding and water features are today.

In Britain the idea of providing land on which poor families could grow their own vegetables goes back several centuries. In the late 19th century it became a statutory obligation on local authorities to make such plots available – a process culminating in the Allotments Act of 1908.

The world's first TV gardening program was In Your Garden, which was broadcast by the BBC on November 21, 1936. The program was presented by Mr. C.H. Middleton, a knowledgeable and charismatic horticulturalist who quickly became a popular figure among viewers. The program was a success and helped to popularize gardening as a hobby. The program was broadcast live from a specially built garden at Alexandra Palace in London. 

The number of allotments in Britain rose in World War I from 600,000 to 1.5 million, and there was a similar temporary increase in World War II.

Sources Radio Times, History World

Garden

The earliest known decorative gardens were in ancient Egypt around 1500 BC.

In Ancient Persia, perfume was a sign of rank. In the backyards of homes belonging to the wealthy, one could find exquisite gardens holding jasmine, lilacs, violets, and the famous red rose.

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were constructed by Nebuchadnezzar, the ruler of Babylonia to please his favorite wife, Amytis in around 570BC. Great terraces of masonry were built one on top of the other. On these were planted gardens of tropical flowers and trees and avenues of palms. They were irrigated by water pumped from the Euphrates River. Nebuchadnezzar and his queen could sit in the shade and look down upon the beauties of the city. They were one of the Wonders of the Ancient World.

The oldest garden that has been tended to continuously is the Canglang Pavilion in China. It was built in 1044 AD on the site of another destroyed garden, It is one of 50 surviving gardens called the Classical Gardens of Suzhou, founded in the 6th Century.

Covent Garden was originally the market garden for the convent of Westminster Abbey. Referred to as "the garden of the Abbey and Convent", and later "the Covent Garden", it was seized by Henry VIII and granted to the Earls of Bedford in 1552.

Covent Garden on the "Woodcut" map of the 1560s, with surrounding wall marked in green

In the 6th century BC, King Nebuchadnezzar built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon to please and console his favorite wife, Amytis. Great terraces of masonry were built one on top of the other. On these were planted gardens of tropical flowers and trees and avenues of palms. They were irrigated by water pumped from the Euphrates River.

By 1400 Domestic garden plots were common in even the most densely populated English cities, and almost always contained at least one fruit tree. Among the fruits grown were apple, cherry, peach, pear, plum and quince. Apples were often preserved in honey or sugar.

King Henry VIII created the The Privy Garden of the Palace of Whitehall, a large enclosed space in Westminster, London,in the mid-1540. It continued to be used as a pleasure garden by the Tudor and Stuart monarchs of England for the next 150 years.

The Privy Garden of the Palace of Whitehall had a screen installed to ensure that passers by would not see the King of England in his bathtub.

Queen Elizabeth I of England was fond of her gardens, which featured large portions of well-scythed and manually-maintained lawns. However, manually-kept lawns were the preserve of the very wealthy.in Elizabethan times.

William and Mary introduced the concept of house and garden with their rebuilt Hampton Court Palace Garden. When they arrived in England, the royal couple brought with them a team of Dutch gardeners and started a new, formal fashion in style. Queen Mary in particular was a very keen horticulturist.

Willam and Mary introduced a Dutch style of formal garden characterized by walks decorated by leaden statuettes and yew hedges clipped into fantastic shapes.

Willam and Mary lived mostly in Hampton Court and were not too put out when one of the maid servants they had bought with them from Holland set fire to Whitehall Palace and burned most of it down, including the privy garden.

The Missouri Botanical Garden is the oldest botanical garden in continuous operation in the USA.

It was founded in 1859

Winston Churchill created with his own hands the garden walls, rockery and waterworks at Chartwell. (He was a fine bricklayer).

The world’s biggest garden is the Dubai Miracle Garden with over 45 million flowers in bloom.

The largest botanical garden in the world, Kew Gardens in London, England, is home to the most extensive collection of genetic plant material. They also employ more than 300 full-time staff in a medical research department.

Kew Gardens

Tyler, Texas contains the world's largest rose garden: 22 acres with over 38,000 rose bushes and more than 500 varieties of rose.

The Poison Garden at England’s Alnwick Garden is dedicated entirely to poisonous plants. It's the most dangerous garden in the world, holding over 100 killer plants such as, hemlock, strychnine, and nightshade.

Source Mesopotamia by Britannica Educational Publishing

Flower

The ancient Egyptians raised the lily, amaryllis, cornflower, and narcissus.

Flowers were raised for their beauty alone in Babylonia. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, built by Nebuchadnezzar in the 6th century BC, were among the Seven Wonders of the ancient world.

The Elamite city of Susa had fine gardens hundreds of years before the Christian Era. Under the Persians, who made it the capital of their empire, it became the greatest horticultural center of the ancient world. Some of today's species of crocus and iris originated in Susa.

The first Chelsea Flower Show was held in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea in London on May 20, 1913. It was organized by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) and attracted over 200,000 visitors. The show was a huge success and quickly became one of the most popular gardening events in the world.

The show has been held every year since 1913, except during World War I and World War II. It is now held over five days in May and attracts over 150,000 visitors each year. The show features a wide variety of exhibits, including flower displays, garden furniture, and gardening products. There are also a number of educational talks and demonstrations.

Dibleys gold medal winning Streptocarpus display, Chelsea Flower Show, May 2011. By Nzfauna 

The slogan "say it with flowers"  was devised for the Society of American Florists in 1917. It was invented by it's chairman, Henry Penn of Boston, Massachusetts with Major Patrick O'Keefe, head of an advertising agency.

The peony flower is named after Paean, physician to the Greek gods. The god of medicine, Asclepius, became jealous of his student, and to save Paean from his teacher's wrath, Zeus transformed him in to a peony.

The first flower grown in space, a zinnia, bloomed on January 16, 2016. It was grown in the Veggie plant growth facility on the International Space Station.

Zinnia bloom. 

Rafflesia arnoldii, named after Sir Stamford Raffles, the founder of Singapore, is the world's largest flower. Found in the Indonesian rain forest, it can grow to be 3 feet across and weigh up to 15 pounds.

The Rafflesia is also known as the corpse flower, so named for the dreadful odor, similar to that of rotting meat, which the plant produces,

Britain's rarest flower is the lady's slipper orchid: a single specimen  grows on a Lancashire golf course under police surveillance.

Each flower broadcasts a variable electrical signal that tells a bee whether the flower has already been emptied by its coworker.

In Mexico yellow flowers symbolizes death, in France they represent infidelity and disloyalty.

When giving someone flowers in Luxembourg it is customary to give an odd number, but not 13.

The word 'Anthology' comes from Greek and means a collection of flowers.

Anthophobia is the fear of flowers.

15% of US women send themselves flowers on Valentine's Day.

Here is a list of songs with flowers in the title

Source Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia © 1998

Fertilizer

In agrarian times, pigeon poop was often was used as a dowry because it served as good fertilizer.

In the 1790s, an Oxford student introduced using guano (the accumulated excrement of seabirds and bats) as fertilizer. He spread guano across the university lawn, using it to spell G U A N O. The lawn was soon scrubbed, but when spring came, the word GUANO was clearly visible, growing higher and thicker than the rest of the grass.

Before oil was discovered in Texas, the state’s richest export was bat droppings which were used as fertilizer.

An estimated 300,000 mummified cats were found at Beni Hassan, Egypt in the late 19th century. They were sold at $18.43 per ton, and shipped to England to be ground up and used for fertilizer.

German chemists Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch's discovery of how to synthesize nitrogen into ammonia meant fertilizer could be produced on an industrial scale. Haber and Bosch were later awarded Nobel prizes, in 1918 and 1931 respectively,  for their invention of the Haber–Bosch process,

It is estimated that two thirds of annual global food production uses nitrogen from the Haber–Bosch process, and that this supports nearly half the world population. It's said to be the possibly the mist significant scientific discovery of the 20th century. 

Run off from fertilizers is creating vast “dead zones” in the ocean which have no fish, a 2004 UN report warned . Five areas off Britain are among nearly 150 globally which have been starved of oxygen because of pollution from nitrogen-based fertilisers. The number of dead zones doubled between 1990 and the year of the report.

Tomato plants fertilized with human urine produce up to four times more fruit and had higher levels of beta-carotene and protein than traditional fertilizers.

The use of commercial fertilizers has increased steadily in the last 50 years, rising almost 20-fold to the current rate of 100 million tonnes of nitrogen per year.

Pixabay

Source Daily Mail

Capability Brown

Lancelot "Capability" Brown was an architect and landscape gardener, who was noted for planning a naturalistic type of garden for the great houses of England with vistas of trees, lakes and flower-beds. He earned his nickname from his saying, when called in to consult on the new laying out of a gentleman’s grounds, “I see great capability of improvement here.”

Born in 1716 in Kirkharle, Northumberland (baptised August 30, 1716), Brown was the son of a land agent (father) and a chambermaid (mother). 

Educated locally until the age of 16, Brown's schooling likely focused on basic skills like reading, writing, and arithmetic.

At 16, he took a crucial step towards his future – an apprenticeship as a gardener at Kirkharle Hall, the estate his father worked for. This hands-on experience laid the foundation for his practical knowledge of plants and gardening techniques.

In 1739, Brown moved south and secured a position as under-gardener at Stowe, the magnificent estate of Lord Cobham.

Brown's talent and ambition were recognized, and he quickly rose through the ranks, becoming the Head Gardener by 1741.

Stowe provided Brown with a crucial platform. Here, he not only honed his gardening skills but also experimented with landscape design, shaping the estate's grounds and removing or constructing features according to his vision. A notable creation from this period is the Grecian Valley, showcasing his innovative approach.

Brown's signature style emerged – natural-looking landscapes with sweeping lawns, serpentine lakes, and strategically placed trees. He aimed to create idyllic scenes that blurred the lines between the house and the surrounding countryside.

Brown became highly sought-after, designing landscapes for numerous prestigious estates across England, including Blenheim Palace, Chatsworth House, and Burghley House. He wasn't just a designer; he provided a complete service, overseeing construction, planting, and overall execution.

Brown's approach wasn't without critics. Some argued that his landscapes, while beautiful, lacked the formality and variety of earlier styles. However, his popularity remained unchallenged during his lifetime.

He designed over 170 parks, many of which still endure.

 
Brown died on February 6, 1783, in Hertford Street, London, on the doorstep of his daughter Bridget, who had married the architect Henry Holland.

Brown's popularity declined rapidly after his death, because his work was seen as a feeble imitation of wild nature. During the nineteenth century he was widely criticized, but during the twentieth century his popularity returned as a result of a favorable account of his talent in Marie-Luise Gothein's History of Garden Art.