Wormery

We’ve been keen vermiculture enthusiasts for a number of years and have can o’ worms set up at our homes and in the car park behind our office – we feed the worms with our kitchen organic waste and they create highly fertile soil and liquid fertilizer.

The problem is that the bins are not made locally, and are plastic and ugly so you always want to hide them and they’re not always desirable for small outdoor spaces.

We wanted to design a wormery as something beautiful, a piece of furniture that could contribute to a small urban garden or apartment balcony.

So we focused on the joinery details and ours is constructed of stacked dovetail jointed hardwood trays, with thin sheet stainless steel bases. The system is modular so if your trays are filling up too fast you can add more. The lower section is lined to collect the rich leachate from the upper trays and has simple brass tap to one side to drain off this worm ‘tea’ which is great organic liquid fertiliser when diluted 1:10 with water.

The lid is a miniature green roof which completes the installation and makes this part of the garden proper. If you’re planting annuals you can drop them under the lid at the end of the season whereupon the worms will turn them into soil for next years plants. The plant tray lid could be something ornamental or edible, the tray itself is 11cm deep – a perfect plant pot.

The wormery is wider than it is deep so it wont protrude too much. Overall it’s 45cm(w) x 375 (h) x 230 (d).
The hardwood which is lightly finished with Danish oil, was ‘leftovers’ from a local joiner but we’ll be making the mark 3 out of Western Red Cedar as it’s durable softwood with a nice finish that can be easily sourced from sustainable suppliers.