Every garden needs compost, and every household generates organic waste which normally has to be collected and transported to landfill sites. The obvious solution is to make compost out of domestic organic waste, but is this possible in London? The answer is yes, and here is one way:

I have used these compost bins for many years. My first versions were made out of wood from skips, so only cost the price of the nails, but they rotted eventually. These ones are made from sawn, pressure treated softwood, are 2' on each side and cost about £20 each to make. You need at least 2 (one you're taking compost from and one you're putting waste into), 3 is better, and my 4 are ideal for my 40' x 15' Victorian terrace garden. As you can see, they don't actually take up any space, because you can put pots etc. on them. They are much better than the round plastic containers which don't hold very much, take up a lot of space, and are hard work to get the compost out of.

What can you compost? The answer is almost anything organic: onion skins, orange peel, hedge trimmings, dead plants, food scraps. Some people even compost newspaper and cardboard after tearing it into shreds and mixing it with the other organic waste.

The old carpet keeps the heap warm, and incidentally provides snug quarters for frogs.

I used to put all my woody stuff in the compost bin as well, but it took a long time to rot, so I now make piles in out-of-the-way places about the garden, like this one under the front hedge. (You can see another one between the compost bins in the picture above.) They are very popular with frogs, beetles and invertebrates, and with the birds which eat the invertebrates! They rot slowly, so each year I carefully remove the well rotted stuff at the bottom and add it to the compost bin. This must be done in the summer, when the frogs are out and about.

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