I always though vegetation can’t grow on sand, but then there was this news about a mini forest pop up after the monsoon rain in Saudi Arabia.
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All these are true. Plants can’t grow in sterile sand but many plants can grow in living sand(a lot of the ocean floor is sand). Many plants we want to grow are not suited to sand.
In living sand, like you would find at the edge of a beach, there is decomposing plant matter and a lot of bacteria and fungi that are eating that plant matter. There’s also small organisms like snails eating the bacterial goo and pooping plus bacteria to eat that poop. This living sand provides all the benefits of what most people call soil. It’s just more freely draining than the soil you’d find in your garden.
If the sand is completely clean and sterile, there is no bacteria or fungi trading minerals to the plant. It also means there’s no bio-goo to hold some of the water for later.
The shifting and loose nature of sand also makes it difficult for many plants to stay rooted. The ones that do well don’t mind if some roots are exposed and use those roots to make a net trapping as much moist living sand under them as possible.
[Here is a pic of natural beach grass thriving in sand.](https://images.app.goo.gl/nbPYeRmxrvJHBAgd7)
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