Avoid having to lug rubbish bags of grass and twigs by building a compost heap – and repay your efforts with fresh compost for your flowerbeds.

Disposing of garden waste can be a dilemma to some people. As removing large sacks of grass and twigs is costly, there is usually a cap on how many bags of garden rubbish can be taken from one property at each week’s collection. For those with large gardens, two bags for garden waste are often not enough to remove all the rubbish. The green solution to this dilemma is to create your own compost pile, which in turn supplies you with fresh, wholesome compost to reuse in your flowerbeds.

To build a compost heap, you only need a shovel and pitchfork for manoeuvring material; however, you might want to wear garden gloves, use a wheelbarrow for large amounts of material, cutters, and have a water hose ready. Next, you want to decide where the compost heap will reside. In English climate, you’ll want to keep it where it will be dry and yet still not too exposed to wind, and not next to a building or vegetable garden, as you wouldn’t want insect problems.

Using a bin is optional but it can help to contain the pile and protect it from harsh weather and excessive wet while keeping the pile contained. If you don't want to buy one, build one yourself, so long as you keep it between 91.44 and 152.4 cubic centimetres, otherwise it will either be too large to compost in a reasonable amount of time or too difficult to stir. Wet the ground underneath the bin/pile.

Now to add your contents. Keep the base dry by crossing whole twigs at the bottom, and then work your way up in intermittent layers of carbon (dried leaves, hay) and nitrogen (grass, manure) products, finishing with a layer of carbon. Cover the pile to protect from rain, and check back on the compost every few days to ensure it’s warm and moisture level isn’t too dry or wet. Turn once every week to every month, and depending on what contents you’ve placed in your compost heap, you should have rich compost in less than two months.