How to hide your garden compost heap

Can you see my compost heap in this picture? No? Good! - A compost heap might be a valuable asset to your garden, but it's not pretty. Here's how to hide it.

If there's space for one, every garden should have a compost heap. 

There are several reasons for making your own compost. 

It's an easy way to get the compost you need for growing plants in containers or for mulching your borders to replenish the nutrients plants have used up. It saves you money as you'll need to buy less compost from the garden centre. It's good for the environment because it recycles a wide variety of garden and kitchen waste. 

Most areas of the UK now have council collections of garden waste, but this is operated at a cost to the taxpayer and involves diesel fuelled trucks, so recycling garden waste yourself is even better.

Commercially produced compost uses energy and produces carbon emissions in it's manufacture and transportation, so simply by buying less in and producing more yourself, you can reduce your impact on the environment and make your garden more sustainable.

Related: 6 ways to reduce your garden's impact on the environment

So having a compost heap is a great idea, but they are pretty ugly. The main alternatives are a large black plastic dalek shaped container, or an open heap contained within a square wooden structure. 

Functional cannot always be beautiful, and I have yet to see an attractive looking compost heap. 

A common solution is simply to put the compost heap at the bottom of the garden in a corner behind the shed. I have two problems with this. 

First I want the bottom of the garden to be somewhere I want to go as much as the rest of the garden, not a dumping ground, or an ugly corner that's not considered part of the garden proper. 

Second, I have a long narrow garden, and I don't want to have to go all the way to the bottom of the garden to put kitchen waste on the compost heap, especially in the dark or the rain. (Whilst I would if I had to, no doubt the rest of the family won't - they would just put stuff in the ordinary bin and it would end up in landfill.) 

Having the compost a bit nearer the house is much better. 

Mine is next to a path and 16 paces from the back door (all along the path), making it much more pleasant (and quicker) to get to.

Many of you will have a wider but shorter garden than mine, meaning there is no choice but to have the compost nearer to the house. This normally means it will be more visible. Some people are worried that it will smell - another reason for putting it somewhere out of the way. In fact, an effective and well balanced compost heap should not produce nasty smells, but you still don't want to look at it.   

So here's what to do so that you don't have to:

How to hide your garden compost heap

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The way I've hidden my compost heap is by almost completely surrounding it with plants. There is a Ceanothus behind it, with lime green foliage and a cloud of bright blue flowers in spring. In front there is a Rosemary, and to the right in this picture a large glossy leaved Osmanthus bush.  

My black compost bin is behind the rosemary!

The compost bin sits amongst these three, which are all evergreen, so that at any time of the year, the ugly black bin is at least partially obscured. It is, however, close enough to the path that it is straightforward to reach and lift the lid to drop in any waste material. 

I prune these plants a couple of times a year to keep it easy to reach between them to remove the bin lid. 

The bin is just an arms length from the path

In front of the compost bin is a small conifer in a pot (seen at the bottom left in the above picture). This obscures the bin when viewed from the path, so that you can walk straight past and maybe not even notice it's there.

However, to be able to remove compost from the bottom of the bin, the conifer can easily be moved in its pot, allowing access to the hatch at the base of the bin where compost is removed from when it's ready. 

To keep the pot in position I've sunken the base of an old broken terracotta pot into the ground, and the pot stands on this to keep it level and in position. This also avoids me having to re-form the ground it stands on every time I make a mess in the area by pulling compost out from the bottom of the bin. Any debris can simply be swept off the terracotta base, and the pot put back.   

The conifer in its pot can easily be moved

This method means my compost bin is not too far from the back door, but doesn't spoil the view of the garden, either from the house...

Looking down the garden from the path

...or from the other side of the garden:

A view back towards the house from behind where the compost bin is

It's always worth having a compost bin or heap of some kind if you can, but now there's no need for it to detract from the beauty of your garden!

Happy gardening.
Paul

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