Orange County, CA Landscaping Rules: Composting (2026)

The county's fruit-and-vegetable-gardening ordinance (Sec. 7-9-102), adopted in 2020, lets residents in unincorporated Orange County keep home gardens in any residential zoning district and sets the ground rules for compost bins used in them: containers must be hidden from the neighbor's view, kept odor-controlled, sealed against pests, and ventilated well enough to avoid a fire hazard, while also meeting state stormwater/runoff standards. The section doubles as OC's composting-bin standard since there is no separate residential composting ordinance in the code. It applies only outside the county's 34 incorporated cities, each of which sets its own rules.