Photo: http://www.ForestWander.com, CC BY-SA 3.0 US , via Wikimedia Commons
Alda Krinsman
A key component of the NVBA Wildlife Sanctuary Program is the Healthy Yard Pledge. There are seven elements to the Pledge, but, because it is October, the focus of this article is on the seventh element of the Pledge: Leave the leaves on non-lawn areas. You may have already heard of the leave the leaves movement. In the past few years, many entities, including the Xerces Society and the USDA, have been conducting leave the leaves campaigns. The National Wildlife Federation has named October as leave the leaves month.
There are many good reasons for leaving the leaves. By keeping fallen leaves on our properties rather than having them hauled away by landscapers or local governments, we can reduce our production of greenhouse gases. No leaf blowers or trucks are needed. Keeping fallen leaves on your property saves you time and money. There is no need to spend time filling leaf bags and dragging them to the curb or hiring someone to do it for you.
Fall leaves, Alda Krinsman
However, as a NVBA Wildlife Sanctuary Program Ambassador, I believe that the most compelling reason for leaving the leaves is that those leaves provide badly needed habitat and food for wildlife. Many of our native moths and butterflies overwinter in fallen leaves either in the form of caterpillars or chrysalises. Spiders, snails, worms, and many insects live or hibernate in the fallen leaves and all are food for birds, chipmunks, box turtles, and salamanders. Some butterflies and fireflies lay their eggs in leaf litter. If we haul away all those leaves, we are destroying habitat and throwing out key components of the food web, not to mention next summer’s butterflies and fireflies.
So, what to do when the leaves fall? Although another element of the Healthy Yard Pledge is reducing lawn coverage area, we are not asking Wildlife Sanctuary clients to damage or kill their lawns by smothering them with thick layers of leaves all winter. However, if you have perennial or shrub borders, simply rake the leaves into the borders to serve as mulch. If you have bare earth or some plantings under your trees, just let the leaves fall and let them be. Those leaves are the tree’s gift to itself. They help retain moisture in the soil around the tree’s roots, and, when they break down, they provide organic matter to the soil around the tree, also to the tree’s benefit. The fallen leaves also provide a soft landing for the caterpillars and chrysalises that fall out of the tree in autumn to look for a warm safe place to overwinter.
If you don’t like the idea of a layer of leaf litter as the sole coverage under your tree, you might consider adding some native plants that support wildlife under the tree. Heather Holm, a bee and pollinator expert, has created a great guide to installing soft landings under trees. If you are concerned that fallen leaves will harm the plants under the tree, don’t be. A walk through a healthy forest will show you that plants coexist and thrive under trees all the time, and no one is raking the leaves in the forest!
Catch up on past Wildlife Sanctuary Almanac articles here.