This time of year, it’s hard to step outside without hearing the omnipresent drone of gas-powered leaf blowers somewhere in the distance. Every yard, it seems, is teaming with homeowners or landscape workers blowing, raking, and bagging the autumn leaves for curbside pickup. Dozens of such bags stand along nearly every driveway, patiently waiting to be carted off by the city collectors, an operation that doubles those workers’ weekly labor and costs the taxpayer thousands.

All of this seems strange in light of the fundamental reality about leaves: they are biodegradable. They are also, as it turns out, ecologically essential.

Just last week, I happened to pick up a fallen maple leaf from where it lay in the grass near my vegetable garden. I intended to show its brilliant yellow color to my three-year-old son, but both of us were surprised and delighted by an even better spectacle: three caterpillars, brown as fallen leaves themselves and curling in instinctive self-defense, clung to the bottom of the leaf. Indeed, many species of moth rely on fallen leaves as an overwinter nesting site and, when we bag or shred these leaves, we’re robbing them of homes and often their lives, a process which has resulted in the rapid decline of many species.

Many wonders lie under the leaves. Image credit: John Silliman

This decline of pollinating moths is just one issue that must make us, as stewards of the natural world, pause to ask questions about why we are investing so much time, energy, and gasoline into the carting off of the leaves on our yards. The answer, of course, has to do with the vanity of our love for grass. I have written about the origins and consequences of the American love of grass elsewhere, and perhaps little else needs to be said. The point is that, though we all love the look of a green sward of a freshly-raked lawn crisped by frost, it’s worth trying to make some space in our world for the creatures that rely on fallen leaves as a habitat. It’s also worth taking advantage of the free fertilizer that fallen leaves can become under the right conditions. Leaves are, after all, a primary ingredient in the soil layer that covers the earth.

At my own house, I split the difference by allowing most of the leaves to lay where they are overwinter in the planted borders, and mulching in the leaves that fall directly on my yard using a lawnmower. The mower does an excellent job shredding the fallen leaves, provided they’re nice and dry, and the resulting colorful confetti disappears into the grass within a day, fertilizing the soil as it does so. It might be wishful thinking, but I could swear that the grass responds to this treatment by greening up appreciably during November. As I proceed to close down the lawn and garden for the year, I take any dry cuttings and run them over with the mower, too, this time with the bag of the mower attached. I dump the shredded remains into the compost and give it all a good stir.

In this way, I’ve avoided using any lawn bags at all for the last four years or so. I see no reason at all that I’ll ever need to use them again. A little careful thinking about the fallen leaves has, therefore, shown the whole leaf-bagging tradition for what it is: a costly gimmick foisted on us by the big box lawn and garden stores, who want us to come in for the bags and leave with a giant inflatable reindeer and six boxes of lightbulbs in the cart as well. We can do better! And we should. After all, though raking is noble work, it’s even nobler to save money, time, and even a few moths with a more careful approach.

Image Credit: Wendell Shinn