All steamed up over a compost heap

AND there's me thinking I was doing my bit for the environment. As well as thousands of others like me.

Beavering away with our grass cuttings and veg waste to produce soil conditioners par excellence. We're the new age composters, encouraged no less than by our own Lancashire County Council and umpteen environmentally conscious organisations like Friends of the Earth and Lancashire Ground Force.

They even gave us free compost bins to set us on our way! The message was that it was not only helping our peat bogs by cutting down on the demand for gift-wrapped supermarket soil conditioner, but it would be good for your soil and excellent for the environment by cutting the volume on landfill sites.

We could all see the sense in that.

Then suddenly the nanny state invades our back gardens with dire warnings about the dangers from our green waste heaps.

After a few centuries of gardening good sense, the boffins at the Environmental Agency have suddenly declared that compost heaps should not be less than 270 yards from where people live and work (dangerous fungal spores, you see) and, if they are, you must have it assessed for environmental risk and APPLY FOR A LICENCE!

What a load of garbage! Are they trying to outdo the sausage and banana measurers in the Common Market? But of course it gets serious when they threaten up to £5,000 in fines if you spread it where wild animals might get access to it. Try keeping the mice, rabbits, hedgehogs, birds and badgers out of your garden, folks (even if you wanted to). And what about keeping foxes out of your rubbish bins? Do these guys live in the real world?

Of course, it's also in the name of cutting down the risk of foot and mouth. Well, any sensible composter (and most are) will tell you that we don't encourage vermin by putting meats, cheeses and other animal products in our heaps.

Just vegetable waste, grass clippings, dead plants, paper, tea bags and twigs. We're putting back in the soil what came out of it.

Can you credit that after all the public-minded effort that's gone into persuading people to compost, providing us with special kitchen waste bins, outdoor compost bins (I have two), bombarding us with advice literature, even organising composting workshops, that some petty bureaucrats are trying to order us to get rid of our heaps? To me it's just further confirmation that the world is going mad.

I think the risk of a meat sandwich being chucked over a hedge from a lay-by is slightly greater than any dangers that may emanate from my garden bin.

I want to make a stand for composting. I won't be getting rid of mine even though it is only two yards from the house.

Not while any odour detectable from it, is overpowered by the stench from dog faeces regularly deposited around my house by thoughtless pet owners (and right below a dog bin). Or the pong of muck spreading on adjoining fields.

There's also the annual distribution of human waste in the form of sewage works slurry which your nose will warn you has been spread on nearby land. And we know what that contains. Doesn't this, particularly, make a mockery of the latest compost heap rules?

And what about the awful cocktail of plastic, poisons, deadly metals and hazardous materials of all kinds ending up in our landfill sites.

The environmental authorities were quick to reassure us, when it was rumbled that BSE infected carcasses were also being tucked away to rot in those sites, that there was absolutely no threat to humans, as if we weren't supposed to realise that rainwater leeches through them into our rivers.

Having been an enthusiastic composter for many years, I cannot image anything healthier, totally odour-free, rich, clean, fragrant and friable for spreading on and improving your soil than the contents of a well-managed compost heap.

It's better than animal manure or other products that DO damage the environment. Composting is crucial to the whole culture and philosophy of gardening. Get that right and your garden grows -- wonderfully.

The practice speaks for itself -- in brilliant flowers and handsome veg. After all, aren't we all encouraged to go organic?

No, I think our Environment Agency boffins should clear out of our gardens and go and sniff around a few of our critical coastal waters now prohibited to fishermen.

And they could do a few tests around Sellafield and a the other nuclear establishments to see how well they are contributing to our much-needed environmental improvements.