Bridget Elworthy and Henrietta Courtauld
Bridget Elworthy and Henrietta Courtauld trace a worldwide network of communities healing soil and reweaving relationships between people and land.
This brown, dirty stuff beneath our feet is in fact teeming with life and has the potential to address many of the greatest challenges we face today. This skin of the Earth sustains us and keeps us alive. It supports and nourishes us. It is the giver of all life and is intricately connected with all life. Its impact is profound. There is no life without soil, and no soil without life.
Last year we curated an exhibition, Soil: The World at Our Feet, at Somerset House in London. We were keen to tell the story of soil – how it is alive, how we have neglected and damaged it, and how deeply interconnected it is with all life. However, we also felt strongly that we wanted visitors to leave with a sense of real hope. At the end of the exhibition we created an art installation called The Land Gardeners’ Map of Soil Heroes, highlighting the inspiring people around the world who are already involved in radical solutions to heal and nourish our soils.
On a 200-acre mixed farm in New Zealand, we discovered Jenny Yates and Steve Erickson, who are exploring quantum-based agriculture (QBA). This approach has its roots in many ancient farming traditions and shares ideas with practices found in biodynamics, homeopathy, electroculture and radionics. While conventional approaches emphasise physical components such as soil chemistry, plant genetics and biological agents, QBA extends beyond the particle-focused framework of conventional agriculture, drawing on concepts from quantum physics and quantum biology, which consider both particle and wave behaviours. Its advocates suggest that, just as quantum principles already underpin everyday technologies such as lasers, MRI scanners and digital electronics, they can also offer insights into living agricultural systems. QBA focuses on the energetic circuitry of soil and plants, proposing that beyond positive and negative mineral charges, soils and organisms express complex vibrational interactions. Jenny and Steve are demonstrating that working with these complexities can benefit the soil and plants. Their ‘Cyclone Sprayer’ vortexes plant extracts, biodynamic preparations and compost teas before they are applied across their land, creating a simple, living food for soils and plants.
In Canada, Owen Goltz and Susan Graham are bringing hope to their local community at Riverdale Farm, where they grow nutrient-dense medicinal plants. Owen is researching food production through the lens of metabolomics – the study of metabolic compounds in the food we grow and eat, and how these interact with the human body. His aim is what he calls “precision food for precision medicine”, and he believes that “it is not the nutrients in the plant that we need to measure; it is the metabolites produced.” Garlic, for example, contains around 1,750 different metabolites, and Owen is researching how changes in soil management and crop care can alter their composition with a view to supporting human health. Humans themselves have about 35,000 metabolites, which can act as markers for current, future and past health issues.
In Australia, Di and Ian Haggerty are working at scale to rebuild soil fertility across 60,000 acres of farmland. Using Johnson-Su compost, a fungal-rich, biologically active compost developed by David Johnson and Hui-Chun Su, and with more than 30 compost shuttles currently in operation, alongside vermicast and carefully managed grazing by animals, they have moved away from conventional chemical farming. For the past 18 years they have relied instead on what they call Natural Intelligence Farming. Their focus is on increasing the diversity and complexity of their “below-ground stock” by sowing seeds alongside biological liquids and applying foliar sprays during plant growth. Vast tracts of semi-arid land are being turned around. Di says, “Stop thinking and start connecting through the heart.”
Connecting through the heart also lies at the centre of community-supported schemes around the world that are bringing about change from the ground up. In Zimbabwe, participants in the Chikukwa Project are restoring degraded land through farmer-to-farmer collaboration, using permaculture principles. By constructing low rock walls and swales to capture and slow water flow, and planting a diversity of species supported by compost, they are reviving the soil and bringing abundance to previously barren lands.
In Peru, Indigenous Andean farmers are being supported by entrepreneur Sarela Herrada to transition to organic farming, creating better returns for crops such as quinoa. Herrada takes care of every step: collecting produce from farms, processing and packaging the food, handling the paperwork and organising through cooperatives. These initiatives are improving soil health, animal welfare and social fairness.
In India, the Centre for Indian Knowledge Systems supports community groups and farmer producer companies in Tamil Nadu, drawing on Indigenous Ayurvedic knowledge to feed and heal the soil. The ancient science of Vrikshayurveda – plant medicine – understands soil as our mother, and plants as kin. Tending the land is as much a matter of spirit and culture as it is of yield and profit.
The UN is now recognising the power of many of these Indigenous techniques. In December 2025 it recognised the Thicket Restoration in South Africa which aims to restore 800,000 hectares of thicket by 2030, crucially bringing together over 60 initiatives to make the soil more resilient, store carbon (up to 8 million tonnes of CO2 annually) and act as a food source and habitat for wildlife.
These examples are only a small taste of the hundreds of projects of radical hope we have encountered in our work to raise awareness of the wonder of soil and its potential to heal the planet. If we treat soil with love and generosity, it can grow healthy food, support animals, clean water systems, reduce flooding, store carbon and help communities build resilience in the face of climate breakdown.
Ultimately, perhaps the most radical idea of all is that each of us has the power to make a difference, through the choices we make and the producers we support, by standing alongside those who are caring for the living soils beneath our feet.
This article was first published in Resurgence & Ecologist Issue 355, Mar/Apr 2026. All rights to this article are reserved to The Resurgence Trust and author. To buy a copy of the magazine, read further articles or find out about the Trust, visit www.resurgence.org.
To learn more, visit www.worldmapofsoilheroes.com
Henrietta Courtauld and Bridget Elworthy are garden designers and soil enthusiasts. In 2012 they founded The Land Gardeners. They are setting up the charity LOVE SOIL to educate, inspire and empower people to make change to heal our soils. For more information on their work go towww.thelandgardeners.com