It’s one thing running a garden on well-aerated (but never dusty), easily compacted (but not too heavy) soil.

But it’s rare that the stars perfectly align; the UK’s soil, which is increasingly degrading, may run a little too chalky or clay-heavy in your backyard.

Here, we’ll share the types of soil in the UK and the best plants for each of them.

The main types of soil in the UK are:

• Chalky,
• Clay,
• Loamy,
• Peaty,
• Sandy,
• Silty.

The type of soil is determined by its particle size. Clay particles are less than 0.002mm; silt is 0.002-0.05mm; sand is 0.05-2mm, and stones are larger than 2mm.

Most soil is a combination of different soil particles.

To count as a “clay” soil, the earth has to contain 25% or more clay particles. These are fertile, but drain slowly and can be compacted quite easily; they take a long time to warm up, and may “bake” in summer. They get sticky when wet.

Chalky soils tend to be stony as they often lie over a limestone bedrock. They usually drain quite freely and are typically alkaline. If your soil froths when you put it in a jar of vinegar, it’s probably high in chalk.

Sandy soils retain little moisture, which is great for draining after rain but a little tougher to work with during hot weather. They feel gritty to the touch.

Loamy soils are often considered “the perfect soil type” as they contain a mixture of clay, sand, and silt. That makes them easy to work with and able to hold on to water without running waterlogged. They’re usually high in nutrients.

Peaty soils can be acidic and hold a lot of water, though they’re also high in nutrients. They’re not usually found in gardens, though.

And silty soils, while easily compacted, usually drain well and are quite fertile. They typically have medium-sized particles, which help them to retain moisture. They rarely clump and feel a little slippery.

Soil-testing kits can help you work out the nutrient content of your soil.

• Roses
• Hydrangea
• Hardy geraniums
• Mahonia
• Foxglove
• Tomato
• Cabbage
• Squash
• Green beans
• Lettuce.

• Geranium
• Clematis
• Lavender
• Yarrow
• Rosemary
• Globe thistle
• Crab apple trees.

• Wisteria
• Geranium
• Day lily
• Dogwood
• Summer bulbs
• Roses
• Peony
• Tomato
• Lettuce
• Carrots
• Beans
• Cucumbers
• Strawberries.

• Rhododendrons
• Azaleas
• Heather
• Magnolias
• Brassicas
• Radishes
• Potatoes.

• Tulips
• Lavender
• Buddleja
• Hardy fuchsia
• Carrot
• Courgette
• Alliums
• Radishes.

• Willows
• Ferns
• Dogwoods
• Astilbe
• Cistus
• Lettuce
• Chard
• Green beans.

Wildflowers do exceptionally well on very new, thin soil, gardener and writer Arthur Parkinson previously told HuffPost UK.

“Perennial wildflowers like ox-eye daisy you can sow onto very poor soils, and they will establish well from being sown in the early autumn. Annual chamomile and cornfield poppies will thrive too if their seed is sown in spring,” he said.

If you’re like most people, you’ve probably drifted off to sleep as soon as you put on a movie or show at night.

It’s a common occurrence – you sit down with your partner to finally watch the season finale of the show everyone is talking about, only to fall asleep, jolt awake, pretend you didn’t fall asleep and keep on watching until you fall asleep again.

Sleep experts told HuffPost there are many reasons this happens, and some are more concerning than others. Here’s what to know:

“There’s a couple of environmental factors to the fact of watching TV, watching a movie that promotes sleepiness,” said Dr. Neal Walia, a sleep specialist at UCLA Health in California. “When you wake up in the morning, you develop something called a sleep drive, which is how much your body wants to sleep.”

As you go about your day, your sleep drive goes up before peaking at bedtime, he explained. “And that drive is what gets you into sleep and carries you to sleep,” Walia noted.

“Usually, people are watching movies and TV in the evening after a long workday. This is when their sleep drive is at the highest,” he said. So your body naturally wants to sleep at this time.

“And then sometimes it’s just a lack of stimulation,” said Dr. Molly Atwood, the director of clinical training in the behavioural sleep medicine program at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore.

If you find yourself feeling tired throughout the day, you may notice that your fatigue disappears when you interact with something, whether that’s scrolling on your phone or getting up to make dinner.

Why? “Your body has a system of overcoming whatever sleepiness you have with stimuli,” according to Walia. And watching TV and or a movie is, generally, a low-stimuli activity, he noted. TikTok or even a task like folding laundry are more high-stimuli.

“If you’re lying down, it is dark – so your body’s kind of getting that signal that it’s nighttime and if the movie is not very stimulating or boring, it might be a lot easier, too, for any sleepiness that is there to take over,” Atwood added.

“Another big thing is that, especially patients with insomnia, a lot of times what they’ll say to me is ‘I just can’t turn my brain off.’ And most of our day, our attention is preoccupied by something – probably a screen, most likely – but something is taking our attention away,” Walia said.

We don’t often just sit with our thoughts. That is, until we drift off to sleep at the end of the day. And if you’re stressed about work or anxious about money, sitting with your thoughts can make it difficult to fall asleep.

“But if you’re watching something like a show, you’re not really in your own head for the most part,” Walia said. Your attention is drawn to the show or movie you’re watching, not the taxes you still need to do. This encourages your body to drift off to sleep.

Your body’s natural circadian rhythm can play a role in whether you’re prone to falling asleep on the couch or not.

“In some circumstances, if you’re more of a morning person, your body naturally makes you alert early in the morning and it shuts down alertness early at night,” Atwood said.

Folks in this group are just naturally more tired at night. For morning people, their body is giving them signals that it’s time for bed, which makes it more likely that they’ll drift off while watching TV.

Many people turn on their comfort shows after a long day. And according to Atwood, it’s more likely that you’ll fall asleep during a show you’ve seen several times.

“Our nervous systems are super calm and comforted, versus like an action movie or a horror movie,” Atwood said.

You also don’t have to pay much attention to the show to know what’s going on, which allows your body to drift off easily, too.

“A lot of our population is sleep deprived,” said Walia, who explained that most people aren’t getting the seven to nine hours of sleep they need each night.

Everyone has different individual sleep needs. But no matter how much sleep your body requires, most folks aren’t getting it.

Because of busy days, family demands and high-stress jobs, you may not even notice you’re sleepy until you’re interacting with something that’s low-stimuli, like a movie. This is when your sleep deprivation can catch up with you and cause you to fall asleep.

Even people who sleep the recommended seven to nine hours a night may not be getting good quality sleep, which can also result in sleepiness on the couch.

“There’s many people out there with untreated or under-treated sleep disorders that disrupt the quality of sleep,” Walia said, adding that sleep apnea is one example of this.

It’s understandable if you fall asleep on the couch after a busy day of travel or after a late night out, but if you’re falling asleep in front of the TV frequently, you should take notice.

“If you’re sitting upright, the lights are on, it’s an engaging movie … and you still can’t keep yourself awake, that might be more of like, ‘OK, I should reevaluate how much sleep I’m getting overall,’” Atwood said.

If you think you’re getting enough sleep but still falling asleep during engaging shows and movies, it’s worth talking to a sleep specialist, she added. A professional can help test you for underlying conditions that could disrupt your sleep.

If you can usually stay awake while watching TV or movies at night, it’s “probably a good indication that [you’re] not sleep deprived or they’re not having disruptions in their sleep,” Walia said.

This nighttime energy reflects relatively good sleep health, he added.

Some sleep disorders can keep people from napping or falling asleep during shows and movies, but, overall, if you are getting enough high-quality sleep, you likely have good sleep health, he said.

I published an essay entitled, “I’m A Surgeon. I’m Also Child-Free — And 6 Words From A Colleague About My Life Left Me Stunned,” on HuffPost Personal in 2024.

The morning it went live, my alarm jolted me from sleep well before sunlight filled the sky. I grabbed my phone, swiped it open to see the headlines, and there, smack dab in the middle of my news feed, I saw my name. The day had hardly begun… and I was already trending.

I had revealed my most private feelings about my reproductive life and detailed how my choice not to have children was repeatedly called out in professional settings. I was confident that whether I had kids or not did not determine my worth as a person. In the 21st century, it should not be controversial to say that some women choose other paths. And, still, that morning, I was nervous about sharing all this in such a public way.

Those nerves only proved my social conditioning. Women without kids are still viewed within the context of rigid stereotypes. I was anxious about how my essay – and I – would be perceived, and I worried it wouldn’t be good.

Then something unexpected happened. I was inundated with messages. Over the next week, my Instagram, the essay’s comment section, and even my work email were flooded with a huge outpouring of gratitude and positivity. Women wrote to thank me for sharing what they felt but couldn’t vocalise, for helping dispel the myth that women without kids are selfish and cold, and for making it clear that women don’t need to apologise for choosing not to have children. More people felt like me than I ever would have guessed.

Most of these messages were from women who, like me, did not want to be mothers. Women who knew that their reproductive freedom was hard fought and well deserved, but still wrestled with strong societal expectations. Some of the messages I received, however, were from women with kids who wished they had been told at some point in their lives that they had other options. I even received notes from men who had witnessed their partners’ or wives’ value reduced to whether or not they were a mother. What united all of these people was a simple wish: for women to be valued beyond their reproductive choices.

I would be lying, though, if I said all the responses I received were positive. A proportion of these notes were filled with anger and resentment. A few of them even veered into harassment. Like the positive messages, these all had a unifying theme.

“You stupid idiot,” wrote one person, “will feminism take care of you when you’re old and dying?” Feminism, responses like these implied, was to blame for my decision to pursue a life as a successful surgeon, to follow the instincts that told me I did not want children of my own and that my life could be complete without motherhood.

To some degree, I expected to receive messages like these from men, but I was surprised to find that many of the negative replies were, in fact, authored by women. They insisted my own take on my own life could not be trusted and that I was lying about feeling fulfilled. I would never be happy, they insisted, and never know true love or joy. My life would always be incomplete, they said, since I had been misled by a wolf in sheep’s clothing into a life without meaning. That wolf was, apparently, feminism.

These sentiments are not new, even if they have been emboldened by the current presidential administration. Feminism has long been a societal scapegoat. The wave of feminism championed by figures like Gloria Steinem encouraged women to free themselves of society’s expectation that all women must have children and stay in the kitchen. However, in recent years, this narrow definition has been heavily critiqued for the way it may appear to overlook and undervalue the labour involved in motherhood. This version of feminism has also estranged women from different backgrounds by centring the experiences and priorities of only white middle class women.

Women who find deep meaning in child rearing and significance in their work at home have felt alienated by mainstream versions of the movement. Some have even fled progressive politics because they found more alignment in conservative platforms, which often embrace domestic life and labour as a woman’s truest calling. There are even those who have argued that feminism has “ruined” motherhood by allowing women to pursue alternative paths in life and by encouraging the declining birth rate. Furthermore, the experiences, voices, and struggles of marginalised, non-white, and queer women have not always been included in the mission of some approaches to / forms of feminism, leaving many searching for alternative frameworks to fight for all women’s rights.

As the derogatory messages I received in my inbox show, the societal skepticism of women without children is not going anywhere, especially now that we have high-powered conservative think tanks pushing regressive gender roles and opposition to feminist movements. They, too, take the stance that feminism has damaged the traditional family structure by allowing women to believe their lives can be fulfilled without motherhood and marriage.

At the same time, conservatives like JD Vance, who is well known for his animosity towards single women without children, are using their large platforms to claim that women who pursue professional careers are causing social unrest.

Instead of addressing the real lack of support mothers face in this country, Trump is also making an explicit play to push motherhood on American women. Since my essay was published, we have seen proposals for a baby-bonus cash payout for new mothers, childbirth medals, and a federally funded tax-advantaged savings account seeded with $1,000 for any child born between 2025 and 2029, all aimed at selling women on partaking in a traditional nuclear-family lifestyle.

As a paediatric surgeon who helps children every day, I do not understand how I could be viewed as an enemy of the state. Unfortunately, I still see this belief play out – even at work.

In fact, a mother recently asked me a series of personal questions to suss out whether I was capable of performing her child’s routine surgery. After inquiring about my qualifications, she asked me directly whether I was a mother. “No,” I told her, and I asked her why she wanted to know. After a bit of rambling, she concluded with an unconvincing apology, noting, “But I think women should be able to do all kinds of jobs… or whatever.”

I don’t mind questions, and I understand parents put a huge amount of trust in their children’s doctors, especially when it comes to surgery. However, this specific encounter was yet another reminder that even a woman’s value in professional settings can be tied back to their reproductive choices.

I knew a question like this didn’t belong in that hospital exam room and had nothing to do with my skill as a surgeon, but it’s no surprise women feel this way. After all, we are all taught to view women without children as less capable and less committed to the care of others.

At the time I wrote my original essay, I had hoped such sentiments about women without children were declining. But in the weeks after it was released, I watched Kamala Harris’ choice to not have children of her own get repeatedly dragged through the mud. The derogatory rhetoric about women without children has, sadly, only accelerated since I awoke to find myself trending on my phone screen.

I, however, have never wavered in my belief in my value as a childfree woman. Because of the women who have come before me, I have been able to live a life full of joy, meaning, and fulfilment – on my own terms. I will continue to use my voice to ensure others can do the same.

Caitlin A. Smith is a surgeon and writer in the Pacific Northwest. Her personal essays on surgical training and experiences have appeared on Doximity. She is currently writing her first book, a firsthand account about the life and experiences of women in medicine. Find her at @miseducationofaknife on Instagram and Substack.

Do you have a compelling personal story you’d like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we’re looking for here and send us a pitch at pitch@huffpost.com.

We already know that exercise seems to reduce dementia risk (a 2022 paper found that walking 3,800 steps a day may lower your likelihood of developing dementia by 25%, with increasing benefits up to 9,800 steps).

Even when it’s not directly dementia-related, movement appears to improve memory and thinking skills.

A recent paper, published in Brain Communications, has found that 20 minutes of cycling a day can create “ripples” in the brain that might help us to process and store information more efficiently.

The research involved 14 participants aged from 17-50. They tracked their brain activity before and after 20-minute stationary cycling sessions through an intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG).

The iEEG measures electrical activity in the brain, which provides an added layer of detail.

Previously, scientists had noticed “ripples” in the minds of rats, which were believed to improve their memories after exercise, though these had not been seen in humans before.

But the iEEGs in this research saw similar results after the participants completed their exercise.

Speaking to Medical News Today, study author Dr Juan Ramirez-Villegas said, “Ripples are very brief bursts of highly synchronised electrical activity in the brain’s memory centre, the hippocampus.

“In animals, they are known to play a key role in stabilising memories after an experience. You can think of them as moments when the brain rapidly ‘reviews’ information, helping convert recent experiences into lasting memories.”

They might also help to regulate blood sugar in animals, the study added.

The study found that the higher someone’s heart rate got during the cycling session, the stronger those “ripples” seemed to be.

“This suggests that the intensity of physical activity may influence how strongly the brain’s memory circuits respond,” stated Dr Ramirez-Villegas.

Aside from the “ripple” effect, this research also seemed to help different parts of the brain communicate better, potentially leading to improved memory.

“It is surprising how after a session of acute exercise, hippocampal-cortical communication seems to be enhanced, a phenomenon thought to be strongly linked to memory processing,” Dr Ramirez-Villegas said.

“This suggests that even a brief bout of physical activity can influence the neural dynamics involved in learning and memory.”