Reviving My Keyhole Garden

Lessons learned from a collapsed compost basket

One of my favorite gardens I’ve built is my keyhole garden. Not only is it beautiful, it’s self-feeding with the compost basket situated in the center. But I messed it up last year. I couldn’t resist the beautiful compost and dug out much of it to add to another garden. You guessed it, the basket collapsed. Duh!

I didn’t want to dig out my plants over the summer, so today, I fixed them. I removed much of the existing soil and pulled out the compost basket made of hardware cloth. Then, I dug out more soil, creating space to set the basket back in place. I was able to bend the basket back into shape and place it back in position. 

When I constructed the keyhole garden, I wrapped the outside of the compost basket with newspaper to prevent soil from spilling into the basket. This time, as I added soil, I didn’t fill the keyhole garden completely to prevent the basket from collapsing, even though it did not do it when I first built the garden. I added enough soil to fill it halfway and a bowl full of kitchen scraps to refill it. We are back in business!

To back up a little bit, for those who aren’t familiar with keyhole gardens, the ingenious design was developed in Africa to grow food in hot, arid conditions. It’s shaped like a pie with a piece removed, or “Pac-man,” depending on your age, and has a compost basket in the center to provide nutrients to the garden. 

(I wrote an article for Northern Gardener: How to Build a Keyhole Garden.) 

The base is filled with organic debris that helps retain water. I built mine over two feet tall and added branches and chunks of wood in the bottom. I thought it was interesting that it’s all gone now. 

I look forward to planting the keyhole garden again this year. I love it when flowers or vining vegetables grow down the stone sides, so maybe I’ll add cucumbers to the garden. The possibilities are endless with this eye-catching and productive growing space.