Thanks for downloading this garden cutting from the National Trust. I'm Alan Power Head gardener at the Stourhead estate in Wiltshire. In these shorter programs, I'm focusing on a particular aspect of our work. And today I'm in our walled garden. This is Emily Utgren. She's on the garden team at Stourhead and does a multitude of tasks. Emily, these are, I'm always quite proud of these compost heaps because they're really tidy, aren't they?
You know, we can see grass clippings, you know, the soft green shoots from, from the plants around the garden and it goes into the compost heap is turned over, goes back into the garden.
And we do it in six months, which is phenomenal.
It's quite a quick turnaround isn't it?
It's a really quick turnaround for a compost. It's certainly not what occurs at home, I can tell you that! And it's not this neat either. But, what we then have to do is we have to make sure that the particle size of the stuff we put in is going to rot down in six months.
And how do you, how do you ensure that happens?
Well, we're lucky because we've got a little shredder. And that's the best idea because it means we can even put things like, you know, the apple cut- prunings from the apple trees annually, put it through the shredder and we can actually get it to break down well enough in six months. But we're not talking a seed sowing compost. We're talking, quite a reasonably coarse compost, which we love here in the walled garden because it provides almost slow release nutrients.
But if you get this nice good coarse material with a tiny bit of leaf still left in, it's also plenty for all of the animals living within the soil. Like the worms, they've got plenty of food to drag down and that makes the the soil airy for instance. So it benefits so many different things to have (lots in your compost).
By shredding and making the particle size smaller that goes into the compost by adding the grass to it and having, you know, your very easily accessible organic layer, you're balancing the carbon release in the compost heap, you're increasing the temperature because the breakdown is accelerated, we turn it regularly. So the compost is turned. So it increases the temperature in different areas of it and it breaks down really quickly, doesn't it?
The grass clippings being the accelerant and produces good moisture and heat, but it has to be the fresh because if, if you're raking hay, for instance, all of the nitrogen is nearly gone already. So you just have to think a little bit, actively, you know, it's a live thing, you know?
I often call it cooking.
Yeah.
How's the compost cooking? Because it's exactly what you're doing, isn't it? So, where you're standing at the moment, Emily, you're standing on a compost heap, on one that's well rotted. So, it's two thirds of the way down the compost bay. The other side is full and is green and is working hard to decompose. But I know for a fact that what you're standing on has had quite an interesting visitors in the past, hasn't it?
We've had, we found, Grass Snake eggs, they find somewhere nice and warm. And if you find them in your compost, you know, you've actually got the heat, right? It's not too hot and it's not too cold. So you don't even need to use a thermometer in them.
I brought Matthew, my youngest son out to see it and I said, Matty come and see this. So he came out, we just came to the front of the compost heap and I lifted it up and we just saw the tail end of one of the snakes disappearing and he got so excited, lifted it up and the eggs were there and the other parents were still around and then within three or four weeks it was almost moving, wasn't it? There was, there was a lot of the Grass Snakes in there. But
it, it's wonderful. You know, it's it's back to that whole cycle of, you know, looking after wildlife, caring for wildlife, even the compost heaps do it. You know, the whole thing is inclusive which is brilliant.
It has to be a holistic way of looking at it for sure.
Thanks for downloading this garden cutting from the National Trust. You can make sure that you never miss an episode by subscribing on your player where you'll also find this month's full length episode of the National Trust Gardens podcast. See you next time.
I'm Bettany Hughes. I've been visiting National Trust properties all my life, but in this series of podcasts, I'm going beyond the delights of teas and topiary to reveal the surprising European roots of some of the most splendid sites in England. You can subscribe to my series by searching for Bettany Hughes's 10 places, Europe and us on your podcast app.