For Kids · The land and the sky · The ground under you
Rivers · West African Coast & Guinean Forest
Try it
Drag the spade down, or tap Dig deeper, through the leaves, the living topsoil and the subsoil, all the way to the bedrock that is really down there.
About 0 cm down
The grass
the top of the ground
Under the grass is a whole hidden world. Drag the spade down — or press Dig deeper — to find out what is down there.
Layer 0 of 5
It takes hundreds of years to make one centimetre of topsoil. The depths are typical — every place is different — and the ruler is squashed at the bottom so the rock fits on the screen.
Say it like this
Go outside: Dig a small hole in the garden and count how many worms live in one shovelful — then put them all back and fill it in.
The river right now
96%
of the ten-year median for this date · 190 m³/s against 197.8 normally
normalAbout what it should be for the date. The river is doing its ordinary work — sorting gravel, feeding its banks and moving fish around at the pace everything in it is adapted to. It is steady through the week ahead.
Under your feet
About 3 million years old — from the ice ages and since — the most recent chapter.
All the kinds of rock, and how each one forms →
Cenozoic sedimentary rocks · Quaternary
sedimentary · Quaternary
Bedrock and soil figures are modelled from national geological surveys and global soil mapping, at a resolution of a few hundred metres — right for the shape of a district, not for a particular garden. River discharge is modelled, not gauged. For anything that matters, dig a hole and look.
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Try it
Drag the spade down, or tap Dig deeper, through the leaves, the living topsoil and the subsoil, all the way to the bedrock that is really down there.
About 0 cm down
The grass
the top of the ground
Under the grass is a whole hidden world. Drag the spade down — or press Dig deeper — to find out what is down there.
Layer 0 of 5
It takes hundreds of years to make one centimetre of topsoil. The depths are typical — every place is different — and the ruler is squashed at the bottom so the rock fits on the screen.
Say it like this
Go outside: Dig a small hole in the garden and count how many worms live in one shovelful — then put them all back and fill it in.
The soil it made
What that means
Comfortable for woodland plants and a little tight for the vegetable garden. Brassicas sulk, and clubroot is worse at this end of the scale.
Happy here without a fight
Blueberries, raspberries, potatoes, rhubarb, carrots, most conifers, azaleas and hydrangeas — which come out blue here.
If you want the rest
A dressing of lime in autumn brings the vegetable beds up without touching the fruit. Leave the blueberries well alone.
Working it
A balance of sand, silt and clay — the texture that holds enough water to matter and still drains, which is why loam is the one everybody wants.