Perfect Compost

Learn how to make and use nourishing compost for your garden with this handy little guidebook from an experienced National Trust head gardener.

Learn how to make and use nourishing compost for your garden with this handy little guidebook from an experienced National Trust head gardener.

It's packed with useful tips for successful composting, from deciding what to put in your kitchen compost caddy to how to use the final product in your garden.

The author discusses the various composting set-ups you can choose, from simple plastic cone-shaped ‘Dalek’ bins to ingenious hand-rotated barrels and elaborate solar-powered hot composting systems, and gives full instructions to make a professional-looking three-bay compost heap from old pallets. Also covered are unusual and innovative techniques such as keyhole gardening and lasagne planting, and there’s a guide to wormeries and, for the very adventurous, snaileries.

He also reveals the many uses to which compost can be put in your garden, and not just to grow plants in – as a top dressing to keep your lawn looking fresh and green, as mulch for your flower beds, or, in liquid form, as a powerfully nutritious plant feed. And there’s a handy guide to which bits of kitchen waste you can put into your compost, and which you really shouldn’t. Finally, if you’ve always wanted an exceptionally environmentally friendly composting toilet, instructions are here.

Beautifully illustrated throughout, this practical guide contains all the advice you'll ever need to get your compost going and use it to help your garden thrive.

About the author

Simon Akeroyd has worked as Garden Manager at both the National Trust and the RHS, and as a horticultural researcher and writer at the BBC. In addition to his writing activities, he is the proprietor of an artisan cider company. He is the author of Perfect Pots, Perfect Lawns, Perfect Pruning and The Good Gardener.