‘Leave the Leaves’ Doesn’t Work if it’s Done Wrong…

Leave the leaves doesn't work if you do it wrong.

You've probably heard a lot of well-intentioned advice around creating habitat.

“Leaving the leaves allows pollinators to overwinter”, and so on.

The thing is - the intention is to create a space that pollinators feel safe enough to overwinter, but if you succeed and then remove it halfway through the following summer, the many insects that need MULTIPLE seasons in the duff layer are S-O-L (s*** out of luck).

On the flip side, if you leave all the leaves all year long, then you’d probably have a crazy, messy looking space, all your grass would die and any plants that aren’t naturally growing through the forest floor would be pretty unhappy.

What we see a TON is people who try to leave the leaves but get sick of it by mid-May, clear them out with a ‘better than nothing’ mentality, and now all that sacrifice and commitment to leaving the leaves is for nothing.

So, there’s a right way and a wrong way.

The wrong way is to white-knuckle it and leave the leaves where they fall until you can’t stand it anymore.

The right way can look like…

• Setting up a chicken wire ring in an area grass won’t grow and putting some of your leaves and sticks there. Extra points if you set it up WITHIN your pollinator garden!

• Building a stumpery! A stumpery is just an old stump that you’ve opted to leave in place (it’s not hurting anyone) where you can pile some logs, leaves and sticks to create an appealing habitat for all sorts of critters and insects looking for a cool, moist spot to make a home. (Did you know that bees use fungi that grow on dead logs as immunity boosters? That’s a different blog post, but dead wood is key to a healthy ecosystem!)

• Designating ANY spot on your landscape as the spot where leaves go and put them there never to be moved again. Most people choose the woods. This creates a safe, fertile place season after season for pollinators and other insects to make a home and overwinter. Again, bonus points if it’s near a pollinator garden!
  

Creating spaces for insect life within our landscapes is critical, and leaving the leaves is a fantastic slogan and sentiment! But, they should really only be left somewhere that you're committed to leaving them long term, like years.

‘Leave the leaves’ the right way. Make your fall cleanup make sense and build an insect habitat that supports their life cycle in perpetuity, not just October - May.