Plant science for plant people.

The amount of dead wood near your front door predicts which helpful bacteria live on your skin. That's not a metaphor.

Researchers added logs, native plants, and healthy soil to city yards, then tracked what changed on the people living there. Participants in rewilded yards kept richer communities of skin microbes deep into autumn, when that diversity normally crashes. Their saliva showed immune-related shifts too. The connection wasn't limited to their own yard; neighborhood deadwood mattered as much or more.

That invisible thread between soil life and everything above it ran through this week's research everywhere. A soil bacterium forms sticky mats around plant roots that physically trap arsenic and kill dangerous microbes, both effects strengthening as the ground warms. Three root bacteria working together kept drought-stressed tomatoes productive when any single one couldn't. City trees, it turns out, pull potent greenhouse gases from waterlogged soil and vent them skyward, but mixing charcoal into the ground cut those emissions sharply.

Your garden's soil is running a health service for everything standing on it, you included.