Leave as Many of the Leaves as You Can!

by Marilyn Trent
We realize that in our neighborhoods, raking the leaves is a necessary part of property upkeep. Did you know that when you clean up your leaves pollinators who overwinter in the leaf matter are disrupted?
Some of the pollinators who overwinter in the leaves are:
  • Fireflies
  • Butterflies
  • Moths
  • Beetles
  • Bees
There is a Happy Medium with Ways to Keep it Tidy 
A pollinator-friendly alternative to raking and then shredding, bagging or burning leaves is to keep as leaves whole and push them around the base of your trees and into your garden beds.
This Helps:
  • protects the plants
  • provide free mulch
  • saves pollinators as all of our beneficial insects overwinter--except for migrating Monarchs--and often do so in the leaves
  • supports pollinator reproductive cycles as shredding, burning or bagging leaves for municipal compost kills the eggs and the pupa
If your leaf mulching and banking around the trees looks intentional it doesn't look untidy. Leave those leaves until late spring when the temperatures consistently go above 50 degrees. Then it is safe to compost them.

Leave the Seed Heads on Your Native Plants

After the growing season has ended, you can support birds and pollinators in mind by leaving the seed heads on your native plants for the following reasons:

  • to help feed the nonmigratory birds--many die because of lack of food
  • butterflies like the swallowtail leave a chrysalis that will emerge in the spring
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