5 Reasons You Should “Leave the Leaves” and Be a Lazy Gardener This Fall

My Best Gardening Tip for Fall? Do Less.

Leaves as mulch in the tropical garden

What if I told you the secret to a healthier, happier garden was… doing less work.

I know, it sounds counterintuitive, but it’s true. Mother Nature figured out how to keep the garden in peak form long before we started pulling and pruning. If you’re into organic, sustainable gardening, or just want your yard to be a biodiversity haven, then the lazy gardener, “leave the leaves”approach isn’t just the easy choice, it’s the eco-friendly one as well.

Don’t believe me? Here are five reasons why you should be lazy and leave the leaves where they are this fall:

1. It’s Good for Native Bees

Mason bee nests sealed with mud in the bee hotel

European honey bees may live together in hives, but our native American bees here in the west and southwest are loners. Bumble bees, carpenter, leafcutter, and mason bees are all solitary, non-aggressive species who perform important pollination functions throughout spring and summer. In the fall, the females seek out soft wood and hollow stemmed plants to lay their eggs where they ride out the winter and emerge as young bees in early spring.

If you want to encourage these native pollinators (many of whom are struggling) to set up their winter home in your garden, you need to provide them with suitable shelter.

You can build a bee hotel (aka: insect hotel), or you can do the lazy gardener thing and simply leave woody, soft-stemmed plants like sunflowers, tithonias (Mexican sunflower), and monardas (Bee balm) standing through the winter.

After it’s warmed in the spring and the bees have hatched, you can “chop and drop” these in place. Because they’ve been standing through the winter, they’ll quickly break down and release their nutrients back to the garden soil.

2. It’s a Free, All-Natural Bird Feeder

A pair of goldfinches snacking on basil seeds

You know that bag of wild bird seed you pay for at the store? Better stuff is probably growing in your garden.

Small birds like finches, towhees, and sparrows, and even larger birds like mockingbirds and jays love seeds and actually prefer picking them fresh off the plant instead of from a feeder.

Allow flowers like zinnias, coneflowers, and sunflowers, as well as herbs and vegetables like basil, lettuce, dill and parsley, to remain standing after they’ve flowered and died back. They’ll provide the local feathered friends with nutritious, protein packed food all winter.

Added bonus: you won’t be fighting squirrel raids like you do with a bird feeder.

3. Helping Next Year’s Butterflies (Approx. 150 words)

A Gulf Flitillary Butterfly snacking on a zinnia in the herb garden

You may think you’re just cleaning the garden up when you rake up those leaves and toss them in the green waste bin. But what you’re probably actually doing is stripping your yard of next spring’s pollinators.

A wide number of butterflies including mourningcloaks, fritillaries, and swallowtails overwinter their caterpillars in leaf debris. The same goes for moths like the Luna and Io which make their cocoons in fallen leaves.

If you’re raking up those fallen leaves and tossing them, you’re also getting rid of next spring’s pollinators for your fruits and flowers. So, rather than that, either move the leaf litter to a new location, or, better yet, embrace your inner lazy gardener and leave the leaves. The butterflies and moths will thank you for it.

4. You’re Making Free, Nutrient-Rich Mulch

Lots of worms are a sign of good soil

Mother nature is very good at converting old plants into nutrients to make great garden soil. Dry, brown leaves are high in carbon that plants use to make their leaves and stems. Fresher, green leaves are high in nitrogen, which is what plants use to make chlorophyll, the molecule that lets plants use sunlight to make food (go photosynthesis!).

Soil critters and microbes consume the leaf matter turning it into a nutrient-rich mulch that helps plant growth. Mulch also helps the soil retain water and insulates it against broad temperature swings and weed seeds.

You can leave the leaves as they are and they’ll break down on their own over the winter. But if you want to speed the process, run them through a chipper or under a lawnmower to break them into smaller pieces that will breakdown more quickly.

5. You’re Saving Yourself A Lot of Time and Money

Lets face it, blowing, raking, and trashing leaves isn’t at the top of anyone’s “fun things to do” list. It takes a lot of time and effort, and ultimately it doesn’t do your garden any good.

More importantly, it deprives your garden of much-needed organic matter and nutrients that will have to be made up with mulch and soil amendments, and those cost money. For the typical suburban yard, that could be an additional $50 – $100 and a couple of day’s worth of work.

Why spend time and money on something that Mother Nature does for free? Being a lazy gardener means you’re not just saving time and money, but you’re actually more eco-friendly too. So, be a lazy gardener and leave the leaves.

Embrace the Mess and Help Mother Nature

It’s natural to want to keep your garden tidy, but that doesn’t mean it needs to be pristine. Mother Nature has it all worked out. So skip the cleanup this weekend and embrace the mess. Better yet, share it with a friend who needs an excuse to be a lazy gardener too. Just tell them to leave the leaves, sit back and watch the garden grow.