St. Johns County, FL Landscaping Rules: Composting (2026)

15 of the county's Land Development Code targets one specific category of composting: a centrally located facility where multiple residential properties dispose of yard trash and the wood fraction of solid waste, and where that material breaks down through natural or mechanical decomposition. The code doesn't define or restrict an individual homeowner's backyard compost pile or bin serving a single residence; that activity falls outside this accessory-use section entirely. Once a composting structure is built to serve more than one single-family residence, two numeric standards apply.

First, every yard, front, rear and side, has to measure at least fifty feet from the property line. That setback doubles to one hundred feet on any side adjacent to residentially zoned property, a buffer meant to keep the smell and activity of a shared yard-waste site away from nearby homes. Second, the site has to be enclosed by an opaque fence at least six feet high, and where that fence also functions as a required screening fence, the code measures its height starting from the finished grade at the minimum required setback or buffer line, not from the composting pad itself.

This section sits inside Article II's accessory-use standards, alongside the county's other neighborhood-facility rules like the domestic hen and skateboard-ramp provisions, and a shared composting structure that doesn't meet the fifty- or one-hundred-foot yard or six-foot fence standard is treated the same as any other accessory structure built without the required setback or screening, subject to Growth Management's site plan review before construction.