Plant matter is generally thrown away in the UK. Even when you take account of the move towards recycling, doing this with your plant waste is, quite frankly, a waste. Recycling it yourself can give you a lot of valuable soil and compost material, that in turn can be reused in your garden, without the need for faffing about with your trash delivery or going to a garden centre to pick up more compost and soil.

A lot of people are intimidated by the idea of managing a compost heap, but the reality is that the whole process takes place with very little effort on your part. In nature, any unliving organic matter will quickly enter a state of decomposition and then transition into food for the remaining living organic matter. By managing a compost heap, you are simply harnessing this standard organic process that occurs everywhere in nature. Even if you take no special effort to enhance and improve the process, you will still be able to produce adequate compost.

To get started, all you need to do is sort out the waste materials that will decompose very quickly from those that won’t. Any thick twigs and sticks, which won’t decompose quickly, should be excluded at the beginning, everything else, such as lawn cuttings, weeds (more on this in a bit) bush trimmings, animal waste and food waste, should be included. All of those things that should be included should be bunches up in a heap.

The only complication in this strategy is adding weeds. Weeds are considered to be scourge by many gardeners, and adding them to your composting heap has some pitfalls. An optimal compost heap should remain at a constant high temperature due to the high concentration of bacteria (which cause the decomposition), which will also kill off most seeds produced by weeds. So in an optimal compost heap, adding weeds shouldn’t be a problem, but any heap with lower levels of bacteria growing within it, there is a good chance that the weed seeds will survive and germinate once you’ve used the compost.