In the garden: Leave the leaves to nurture nature

Leaving leaves where they fall in my pollinator garden gives fabulous winter habitat to a wide variety of insects and spiders.  Photo by Barbara Sibbald 

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Let’s take our cue from the forest. No one is raking or bagging the leaves there, yet the woodland thrives. And with good reason. Decomposing plant litter provides a much-needed home for overwintering insects (including vital pollinators), returns nutrients to the soil and is a mulch for growing plants. Do I want dead leaves on my home garden? On the plus side, minimal raking or tidying required. But it’s so messy, you may lament.  

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Let’s take a closer look.  

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Fallen leaves are a biodiverse microhabitat. Leaving them provides crucial winter habitat for many native bees, beetles, spiders, butterflies (e.g. mourning cloak) and moths. Some are pollinators. Others are pest-controlling insects such as parasitic wasps. 

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Since most butterflies and moths don’t migrate, they need suitable habitat for overwintering, whether as eggs, larvae, pupae or adults.  A study by Max Ferlauto and associates (2025) indicated that removing leaves can reduce butterfly and moth species abundance in spring by 45 per cent, beetles by 24 per cent and spiders by up to 67 per cent. Conversely, leaving the leaves increases all these populations, as well as the number of earthworms and decomposers such as springtails.  

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Piled on your garden bed to a depth of about 15cm, leaves also help insulate perennials during winter. And as they decompose, they return 50-80 per cent of the nutrients they contain to the soil. This layer of leaves also acts as a mulch that suppresses weeds, reduces surface water runoff by about 30 per cent and soil erosion by up to 85 per cent.  All this means a healthy, hydrated garden without the use of chemicals.  

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The old-school practice of transporting bagged leaves to municipal compost facilities pre-empts these benefits while contributing to greenhouse gas emissions.  

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Spring bulbs push through the leaf litter as I wait for a consistent 10°C temperature before chopping and dropping stems. Photo by Barbara Sibbald

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What about my lawn? 

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As we all know, a few large trees can mean a thick, heavy blanket of leaves on your lawn that looks untidy and can damage the grass. Turf experts say it may be okay to leave 10-20% of your lawn with a thin covering of leaves, but no more.  Excess leaves can be raked onto garden beds, under shrubs or trees. Don’t pile them too high; think about what you might see in a forest.  If you have an unused corner in your yard, you might also try leaving a small pile of leaves and dead wood to shelter even more insects.  

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Some homeowners shred dry leaves by running a lawnmower over them but this may kill hibernating insects and larvae.  

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I turned my turf lawn into a garden about a decade ago. More recently, I planted part as a pollinator patch. In both front and back yard gardens, I now leave leaves as well as the dead stems and stalks of my perennial plants. The seed heads feed birds, and many insects nest in hollow stems. They also look pretty poking up through the snow.