Following the success of the UK’s first festival of composting in 2025, COMPOSTED returns with a broader vision — exploring how true resilience can be built into our soils, our gardens and our communities. This year, a new collaboration between Cambo Gardens and Beth Chatto’s Plants & Gardens brings the festival to two celebrated gardens, united by a shared mission...

COMPOSTED makes soil science visible, composting accessible, and environmental action joyful. This exploration in sustainability aims to make the best possible use of kitchen and garden waste, to build habitat, nurture the soil and to grow nutritious food. Through extensive garden displays, live demonstrations and guest lectures, COMPOSTED showcases a broad range of ideas that visitors can apply in their own greenspaces, at home and in the community to get composting and to help mitigate the biodiversity crisis.

At its heart, COMPOSTED is about what happens when we return goodness to the soil. Healthy soil nurtures biodiversity, supports plant health and sustains the plants and food that we grow. From there, the connections multiply. How we design our gardens determines whether they work for people, wildlife and communities alike. The seeds we save and share shape our food security and sovereignty. And the health of our soil is inseparable from the health of ourselves. COMPOSTED 2026 traces these connections across a varied programme of self-guided trails, workshops, talks and community events.

Each garden brings its own emphasis - Beth Chatto’s garden explores habitat creation and the deep relationship between compost and soil biology, while Cambo features sustainability in garden design, seed sovereignty and food security.

“Composting to us is a perfect example of community,” said Jonny Furze of the Soil Ecology Laboratory.

Highlights of COMPOSTED 2026

A Compost Walking Trail
At the heart of the festival is a self-guided compost trail around each garden. Each trail features a unique set of displays, showcasing the results of each garden’s journey with composting and the sustainable use of garden waste. Shared themes include large-scale composting, leaf mould and habitat creation, while each garden brings its own discoveries in bokashi, no-dig growing and more.

Talks and Workshops
A varied programme of tours, talks and hands-on workshops runs throughout the festival, exploring the living connections between composting, habitat creation, no-dig gardening, seed saving and plant and human health. At Beth Chatto’s, visitors can discover the hidden world within the compost heap, learning

how microscopic organisms cycle nutrients and make them available to plants. A highlight is a day-long celebration of composting, featuring activities with Eddie Bailey, Rhizophyllia and the Soil Ecology Laboratory.

At Cambo, family workshops invite visitors to build striking biodegradable sculptures from garden waste, creating artwork that has real wildlife value. In the no-dig kitchen garden, visitors can see seed sovereignty in action, with biodiverse, regenerative crops being grown and saved as part of a network of growers sowing, selecting and sharing seed to build more resilient harvests.

“Resilience is found in diversity, and in the connection between us and all the living beings that surround us,” added Holly Silvester of Gaia Foundation and East Neuk Market Garden.

Resilient Gardens
Resilient Gardens is a special day-long COMPOSTED event for anyone gardening with sustainability in mind — landscape designer Marian Boswall, author of The Kindest Garden, and grower Holly Silvester of Gaia Foundation and East Neuk Market Garden explore how we can design gardens that genuinely sustain life.

Teeming! An exporation of the living world beneath our feet.
Teeming! is a special day-long COMPOSTED event celebrating composting and the soil food web. This day will feature activities with Eddie Bailey of

Rhizophyllia and the Soil Ecology Lab to get to the heart of the living world beneath our feet.

Community Connections

COMPOSTED has been built on conversation and the sharing of knowledge and ideas between gardeners, growers and communities. In the festival’s first year, Cambo welcomed gardeners from four community gardens from across Fife to learn about composting, but as we expected, Cambo’s garden team gained just as much in return. That spirit of exchange, where learning and support flow in both directions, remains at the heart of the festival’s ethos. For 2026, COMPOSTED in the Community reaches further. Beth Chatto’s garden will hold a community event at the pioneering Meanwhile Garden in central Colchester, while Cambo hosts satellite events at Strathkinness Community Garden and PLANT Tayport. These are brilliant community-led projects and we aim to celebrate their achievements and signpost them for other local people who might like to get involved.

Key Festival Dates

Cambo Gardens

• 7 June — Composted Community Event - Workshops and Tours at Strathkinnes Community Garden
• 13 June — No Dig & Seed Saving With Cambo gardener Esme
• 20 June — Resilient Gardens - Talks/workshops from garden designer Marian Boswall and Agroecological veg seed grower Holly Silvester.
• 27 June - Composted Community Event - Workshops and Tours at Plant Tayport Community Garden
• 12 July — Compost Clinic with Callum Halstead (Cambo) and Seb Chaloner (Beth Chatto) - From horrible heaps to compostncompetency - bring your questions, leave with solutions.

Beth Chatto’s Plants & Gardens

• 13 June — Composted Community Clinic Workshop at the Meanwhile Garden, Colchester
• 27 June — Teeming! An exploration of the living world beneath our feet – Activities / workshops with Eddie Bailey, Rhizophyllia and the Soil Ecology Laboratory
• 4 July — Compost Clinic with Callum Halstead (Cambo) and Seb Chaloner (Beth Chatto) - From horrible heaps to compost competency - bring your questions, leave with solutions.

Throughout the festival, self-guided compost trails and garden displays will remain open to all visitors.