Bowie, MD Landscaping Rules: Composting (2026)

City Code § 5-7B(2)(a) requires every exterior property area to stay clean and sanitary, free of accumulated litter, rubbish, refuse, trash or garbage, including yard trimmings, mulch, hay, straw, manure, shavings, sawdust, coal, or ashes. Subsection B(2)(b) then carves out backyard composting from that ban: a 'compost site,' defined in § 5-6 as a segregated location on residential property for the controlled biological decomposition of yard refuse, fruit or vegetable waste, egg shells, or coffee grounds, is exempt from the accumulation rule as long as it meets three conditions at once.

It must be kept free of noxious odors, it must sit in the rear yard rather than a front or side yard, and it may cover no more than one-half of one percent, 0.5%, of the lot's total square footage, so the allowed footprint scales with lot size rather than a flat number of square feet. A pile that drifts outside the rear yard, grows past the 0.5% cap, or starts producing noxious odors loses the exemption and reverts to being an ordinary accumulation violation under § 5-7B(2)(a), enforceable the same way as an uncollected trash pile.

The rule sits inside the City's Housing and Property Maintenance Code, so the same code compliance staff who inspect rental units and respond to overgrowth complaints handle composting complaints from neighbors.