Maria Flinck is a Swedish garden antiquarian and researcher on garden history. She is the author of A Thousand Years in the Garden, from Sörmland’s manors and backyards, Historical Gardens – Preserving a Changing Cultural Heritage. Maria works with the conservation of historic gardens and became a honorary doctor at the University of Gothenburg in 2020.   The sources are gardening manuals, household books and economic dictionaries from 1650 to 1980. How was composting managed, where were compostheaps or -holes kept, what ingredients were used and what did people at different times think about composting, manure and soil.