Save yourself a lot of work this autumn and leave the leaves! You don’t have to leave them where they fall, instead completely, you can push all the leaves into piles in the corners and edges of your property, in out-of-the-way areas, and move the leaves onto your garden beds!
This will create a habitat for your smaller creatures and act like free mulch and insulation!
We’re not saying you shouldn’t rake at all. Nor do you don’t have to turn your entire yard into a giant leaf pile either! We’re just saying those leaves are so much more valuable to your local garden inhabitants and your plants than if they were disposed of in the yard waste!
Check out all the ways the leaves help your pollinators and the other ways you can help beneficial insects this fall!
The trees are about to show us how lovely it is to let things go.
- Unknown
Critters That Rely On Your Leaf Litter!
Want to know some of the critters that are relying on your leaves for a winter home? A ton of your favorite pollinators and insects need hollow stems, leaf cover, and piles of twigs and sticks for a place to lay their eggs and a place for themselves to overwinter safely!
- Amphibians like Toads, Turtles, Newts, Salamanders, and Wood Frogs undergo brumation and hibernation.
- Beloved insects like Sowbugs (Pillbugs/Roly Polys), Ladybugs, Daddy Long Legs, Bumblebees, Stickbugs, and Fireflies.
- Beneficial insects like Solitary Bees, Lacewings, beetles, millipedes and centipedes, and Spiders, and their eggs use leaf litter to overwinter and stay safe from predators
- Caterpillars of Butterflies and Moths like Luna Moths, Wooly Bears, Fritillarys, and many more!
Swallowtail butterfly and Sulphur butterfly pupae overwinter on fallen leaves. Many egg cases and chrysalis even look like leaves, or use leaves and twigs as part of their cocoons, to blend in better!
Solitary bees use narrow cavities, dig holes in the ground or inside stems, hollow stems from pithy plants and grasses, or tunnels in dead wood. So when handling and moving leaf litter piles and your bug hotels, take care and be gentle!
Ways To Support Beneficial Insects Through The Winter
You don’t need to entirely give up on keeping your lawn tidy for their sake.
You can simply mow over many of the leaves of some trees with smaller leaves and shred them up as they fall and eliminate the heavy lifting.
You can also simply keep a back corner free of manicured lawn, a place where the weeds and wild can grow without pesticides, and a place where your beneficial insects can hide for the winter. Move all your leaves into these places for the winter or move them to your garden beds as free mulch!
Mow over some of the leaves as they fall and use them for mulch as they will not matt down.
So beyond leaving piles of leaves, how can you keep your favorite pollinators and beneficial insects safe from winter's chill?
- Let a patch of wild grow in a sunny area behind your garage, back shed, or hidden behind a hedge where the weeds can grow without chemicals, without mowing, and left to their own devices beyond the little you will need to do to keep it growing where you want it to grow.
- Plant native plants that are indigenous to your area so you can better support local insects and wildlife.
- Don’t cut back your ornamental grass, and many perennials until spring. Leave them stand to give insects a place to shelter in and any eggs or cocoons on these stems and leaves to keep safe.
- Buy or build a Bug Hotel - Create a log pile with many different sizes of twigs and stems, hollow bamboo stems of varying sizes, Rocks and pebbles of various sizes, hollow PVC pipes, pinecones, handfuls of grass, piles of tree bark, broken pottery, bunches of clean leaves with a cover to keep them dry. Make sure the materials are free of paint, and chemicals, ensure they are made of untreated wood, and free of varnish. Check yours often to ensure colonies of wasps haven’t moved in and refresh the material as it breaks down (as natural materials tend to/are supposed to do!).
- Install pipes for toads and frogs deep in the ground below the frost line, and turtle houses if you are near a body of water or have a pond.
- Avoid using chemicals on your yard and garden, or at least broadcasting chemicals that indiscriminately kill everything and anything. Choose spot treatment options and specific pest treatments, and control small issues by hand. Use a light hand when you do need to treat, or use an organic pesticide option. You can also attract beneficial predatory insects to help eat your problem bugs.
- Go big and turn a large patch or strip of your lawn into a bioswale or buffer strip of just weeds and native prairie plants, or turn your front yard into a meadow with low-growing native plants.
- Wait until mid to late spring on things that you can before you do your garden clean up - allowing these hibernating bugs, cocoons, and eggs to hatch and emerge safely.
- Change your lawn from turf grass to a low-growing alternative or clover lawn and wait to mow and treat weeds so early emerging pollinators have some dandelions, clover, and other early spring flowers to feed on.
Any little thing you can do in your garden of any size will support pollinators and the ‘good bugs’ that make your yard their home! After all, they’ve always been here and we simply moved onto their space.
Giving them a space to winter over safely also keeps them from turning to any cracks and crevices in your home and invading your nice warm indoor spaces instead!
So Put Down The Rake (For Now)!
A messy garden is a living garden! While a well-manicured landscape looks picture-perfect, it’s actually devoid of biodiversity and life! One heavy-handed sweep of pesticide that kills everything in its wake, or a lawn of turfgrass monoculture alone can potentially destroy generations of beneficial and our favorite insects in a single season.
Besides, it costs more and takes so much more of your precious time to maintain the perfect landscape!
Have a garden worthy to post on your social media during the growing season, but save the late fall, winter, and early spring for your pollinators and have a messy garden. Leaving dried plants, piles of leaves, and seed heads also benefits birds looking for a winter snack, and shelter from the cold and snow!
Even if you don’t want to do it for the critters, moving all your fallen leaves to a backyard pile as a compost pile or compost bin, you’ll create black gold for your garden beds and planters for free!
Create a safe winter habitat for your garden denizens this fall by saving yourself the chore of raking leaves! Everyone and everything benefits from this rich resource!
Happy Planting!
