Behind the Brand: Meet the Gardening Experts (and Plant Whisperers) of Good Dirt

Many people think dirt is just dirt. But for Suzy and Al Newsom, a husband-wife team in Raleigh, North Carolina and founders of Latina woman-owned gardening brand Good Dirt, soil is a living, breathing entity and should be treated as such through proper care and nutrition.

Roughly 10 years ago, Al, who spent his entire career in the gardening industry, was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with potting mixes available to commercial growers and retailers. The different soils he tried growing things in just weren’t producing the results he was looking or hoping for; which got him thinking: Why isn’t this working, and can I do it better myself?

“It got to the point where I was like, ‘Hey, I’m a horticulturist. I’m a consultant to commercial growers … and I can’t figure this out? I can find something better than that,’” Al says, thus launching him into a fact-finding mission as to why his leafy friends weren’t growing to their full potential.

What Al discovered about these potting mixes he was using was eye opening. According to Al, most, if not all, soil companies add pine bark or shredded wood of unknown origins (including materials exposed to chemicals) into potting mixes. Sounds normal, right? Well this bark or wood quickly breaks down in soil, consequently creating a compacted, dense dirt that inhibits air circulation or water flow — all of which prevents plants from thriving.

Armed with this newfound knowledge, Al started looking for solutions, eventually landing on a natural byproduct from peat bogs in Canada the Newsoms have since coined as BogBits® — a sustainably harvested, almost-petrified wood product that’s screened out of peat moss and transformed into a fiber.

“We just started playing around with it and then that's when the light bulb went off,” says Al. “We found that this wooden fiber doesn't break down. If that's one of the main components of a potting mix, you're giving [soil] a structure for air flow and nutrient flow, where roots can breathe.”

Excited by the prospect of a soil breakthrough, the Newsoms put their BogBits®-laden dirt to the test, planting finicky vinca — a flowering annual vinca, not the groundcover type — in a container. By the end of the growing season, the results were staggering.

“When we took that plant out [of the pot] to change it out, it had roots all the way down to the bottom of the pot,” Al recalls. “I've never been able to do that before. So that's how we figured out we have found the magic recipe.”

After landing on this “magic recipe” made with all natural, organic, non-GMO, renewable, and plant-based components, Al tapped on his wife Suzy, a business and marketing industry guru and veteran. He explained that he was toying with the idea of starting a potting soil company. Suzy was all in.

“[He was] like, ‘I think it's going to be amazing, but I don't want to run a company,’” Suzy recalls of the initial conversation. “I was like, ‘Well, I can do that.’”

Suzy, a fellow plant lover and Brazil native, hit the ground running, performing some serious research and development on existing brands to determine how to bring their own unique product to market that was everything the others aren’t.

After looking at, feeling, and lifting several bags of dirt out of the back of her car, Suzy determined that most items available to consumers were too heavy, too ugly — “[The bags] all looked like dog food,” she laughs — and too technical; which ultimately helped her land on Good Dirt’s trademarked criteria: simple, successful, sustainable.

“[I]t has to be simple for someone who is a first time learner or a person who's been a gardener for years,” she says before explaining that Good Dirt is simple in the sense that all you have to do is open the bag and use it — no watering, incorporating additives, or waiting for it to expand is required.

“You have to be successful because new gardeners when they are not successful in their endeavor tend to give up easily,” Suzy says. “[A]nd it has to be sustainable.”

The Newsoms’ dedication to using quality, earth-friendly ingredients also extends to their manufacturing process, only partnering with companies that practice the same natural ethos that Good Dirt does.

Ultimately, the Good Dirt founders believe that fostering a healthy earth, and lifestyle, comes down to the very foundation — down to the living dirt.

“If you go to build a new house, the most important aspect is the foundation, and it’s the same with plants,” says Al, before Suzy adds, “The foundation of the house is the grounding of the house. And the foundation of the garden is the soil and the preparation that goes into it.”

“[I]f you have the right ingredients, you don't need 10 fertilizers, you don't need 10 soils … And if you have the quality ingredients, your plants can breathe, your plants have nutrition from the soil, and the soil is living, any plant can live in that soil.”

As the brand’s flagship product, Good Dirt’s Outdoor Potting Mix features its revolutionary BogBits® and living soil that’s guaranteed to produce bigger blooms, healthier roots, and faster growth, all without the use of chemicals and animal byproducts. Plus, a bag of Good Dirt is roughly half the weight of similarly-sized bags from competitors.

Just like we need nourishment, plants need to eat, too. So the savvy plant whisperers at Good Dirt developed Plant Food, a concentrated liquid fertilizer that feeds your plants and soil with a well-balanced diet of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and amino acids.

Chock full of beneficial microbial organisms, Plant Biotics boosts plant’s natural immunity, helps nutrient absorption, and root development. Think of it like a multivitamin or probiotic for plants.