Leave the leaves and let creatures hibernate

By: 
Rob Zimmer
Columnist

By now, you’ve probably all heard the recent mantra over the past few years of “leave the leaves.“ More and more, messages like this are flooding social media and magazine articles, imploring you to skip fall garden cleanup and allow Mother Nature to do what comes naturally.

Have you tried it yet? Have you attempted to skip the fall cleanup for the sake of birds, insects and wildlife? This week, I offer some information on why this is a great choice.

Looking to Mother Nature, we can see clues and reasons why we should not be so obsessed with cleaning up fall garden waste. Many of our favorite creatures actually overwinter in leafy yard debris and the hollow stems of dormant annuals and perennials.

Native bees such as mason bees and bumblebees and others overwinter among the debris left on the ground. Leaves, weed debris, mast and old wood and stumps are great places for bees and other insects to overwinter. The queens of all of these species, and others, spend the winter sheltered underneath leaf litter and other garden debris.

By raking away or blowing away fallen leaves, you are killing those precious creatures.

The cocoons of Luna moths and Cecropia moths and others are also found among leaf litter, old stems and woody shrubs. By disturbing these or removing them, we are destroying populations of these incredible insects.

Try to skip heavy raking and blowing this fall and give these amazing creatures a chance.

Another aspect to consider is that all of the plants that we have grown all summer long in the garden are now filled with precious and nutritious seed. These seed heads provide an amazing source of nutrition for overwintering birds, as well as those now migrating through.

Juncoes, chickadees, nuthatches, goldfinches, American tree sparrows, pine siskins and others feast upon these seeds throughout the winter season, giving them a vital source of nutrition and energy. By chopping up and hauling away all of these precious food sources, we are removing a vital source of nutrition and sustenance for overwintering songbirds.

Plants such as purple coneflower, sunflower, zinnia, cosmos, goldenrod, aster, black eyed Susan and others produce massive amounts of seeds, making them a precious food source for migrating and overwintering birds. Ornamental grasses, especially native varieties, also produce huge numbers of seeds that these birds depend upon for winter food.

Allowing garden plants to remain standing throughout fall and winter is one of the easiest and most beneficial things we can do to help songbirds through the winter.

If you’re not quite ready to completely give up the fall cleanup, a simple thing you can do is cut back your perennials and annuals that are full of seed and simply stack them in bunches, or stand them erect in chicken wire cages or tied around the bases of trees. This allows the birds to still access the seeds, and you can still get the garden beds chopped back and cleaned up. You can also hang them from trees and poles to allow the birds access to the precious seed.


Rob Zimmer is a nature and garden author, public speaker and radio show host on WHBY. Readers can find him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/RobZimmerOutdoors.