5 Quick Ways To Improve Your Soil & Naturally Regenerate Your Garden

You can learn a lot about a garden by digging up its dirt. Ideally, the soil in your hands would be dark, moist, crumbly, and teeming with bugs and earthworms; signs it’s effectively delivering nutrients to plants, storing water, and retrieving excess carbon from the atmosphere.

If yours falls more into the dry, compact, and lifeless category, you’re not alone. “In most places, you can assume that your soil is in need of some care,” longtime urban gardener Rishi Kumar tells mbg. However, turning things around underground is possible and relatively easy.

Since co-founding his company Healing Gardens, which connects people with impressive gardens in their area to visit or rent out for events, Kumar has seen plenty of vibrant, lush outdoor spaces that started as patches of barren ground. “Every type of soil is capable of creating a garden and store carbon,” he says, adding that sometimes it just needs a little help from us.

Here, Kumar shares five ways to nurture your soil back to health and regenerate your garden in the process.