WHO KNEW You Could Create Wildlife Havens and Save Money at the Same Time?

It’s that time of year when falling leaves provide landscaping companies the opportunity to “rake in” lots of extra cash by convincing clients that they need a “fall clean-up”. A full fall clean-up involves cutting your dead stalks to the nub and scouring your property clean of leaves, with nary a spot for an insect to call home. Too often, loud, heavily polluting leaf blowers are used week after week, adding insult to injury.

We now understand that a healthy garden, or ecosystem, is a messy one. Insects, birds and small mammals rely on leaf litter, seed heads and stalks for overwintering and for food. All that organic matter breaks down and enriches the soil, improving the health of your garden. If you remove everything, you remove the wildlife and deplete the soil. Soil rich in organic matter retains more water, something which is critical during times of drought, like the extreme one we are currently experiencing.

With overdevelopment of our green and open spaces, our gardens and yards have never been more important as wildlife havens. Places where insects, birds and other wildlife can go to forage, find shelter and survive the winter are few and far between.

So, save yourself some money and forego the fall clean-up. Enjoy the birds that will visit your seed heads this winter and feel good about the bees that are using your dead flower stalks as a winter home. You might discover that you don’t even need to clean up those stalks in the spring; in my garden, the young shoots manage to find their way through, and the dead stalks disappear after a couple of weeks under a blanket of new growth.