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It is hard to ignore the effect our lifestyles have on the environment these days and rightly so. Climate change is big news and it seems like everyone's 'going green'. Not least than at  Kew Gardens in Richmond upon Thames.

Kew has one of the biggest non-commercial compost heaps in Europe. Many of the UK's peat bogs were being depleted by being used as as a source of potting compost.These peat bogs are  important habitats and valuable stores of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide and need to be sustained. In an attempt to reduce the impact on these environmentally important  bogs, Kew Gardens now use peat substitute for potting composts and make home-grown mulches  using waste plant matter from the Botanic Gardens itself.

Although the gigantic compost heap is off-limits to visitors, there is a viewing platform in the Pinetum from where the compost-making process can be observed and indeed smelt! This amazing 'cooking compost heap' can be found in an area of Kew Gardens called the Stable Yard, which is the base for the horticultural and arboricultural management of the Gardens.

All garden waste is taken to the yard and placed on one of two huge mounds, one for woody material and the other for herbaceous cuttings. Both these piles are screened, shredded and mixed with generous helpings of horse manure from the Royal Horse Artillery Stables. It is  occasionally sprinkled with water and 'stirred'  using a JCB but no other manual intervention is required.

The  rotting process takes eight weeks to complete having reached a natural 'cooking' temperature of 60°C ( 140° F). It is then ready to go back on the garden as mulch or to enrich the plants from whence it came.




When it comes to going green, the Richmond Environment Network are great advocates of the REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE waste hierarchy and have some useful ideas about how we can incorporate the 3 R's into our daily activites . REN is a multi award-winning  joint venture between the Environment Trust for Richmond upon Thames, BTCV (Richmond upon Thames office) and the Thames Landscape Strategy.