– Scott LaFleur, Horticulture and Botanic Garden Director 

Did you ever wish money could fall from trees? Quick! Look outside, it’s happening now! Every autumn, the trees and shrubs in our yards pay us in leaves. They are refunding all our gardening efforts by giving us everything we will need to do it all again next year. With this annual gardening stimulus package, you should be able keep your garden economy healthy and vibrant. There is no need to spend a dime on fertilizer.

All the nutrients the plants could need are returned to the ground every year. This is how forests, meadows, swamps, and other plant communities fertilize themselves. Our intervention can disrupt this time-tested method. So, become a part of the solution, not part of the problem!

Ecological "banking"

By bagging up your leaves and sending them off to a landfill or even a community compost station you are actually robbing your yard of precious nutrients. Twenty to 50 percent of the solid waste sent to landfills is made of tree leaves, grass clippings, other landscape debris and kitchen wastes. Composting leaves at home reduces the volume of curbside solid waste. This saves transportation and disposal costs while providing an ecologically sound alternative you can bank on. It’s a great way to go green.

"Saving" and "spending" leaves

Composting leaves can be as simple as putting them in a pile and letting them decompose. You can also help to speed the process by shredding the leaves and managing your compost pile. Begin by creating a three-bin system.

• In the first bin, you should deposit your shredded leaves as well as other yard and kitchen waste. In essence, this is a “CD.” Here is where you will leave your compost to mature for about a month or two.
• The second bin is your “savings account.” Take your compost from the “CD” and put it into a slightly more accessible account. At this point, the compost is about half way there. It has broken down, but you can still distinguish leaf and plant parts. Leave it in this account for another month or two.
• Finally deposit it all into the third bin, your “checking account.” At this stage, you should not be able to differentiate individual leaves or plant parts. Now you can start spending your compost as soil amendment or top dressing or turn it into compost tea for use as a liquid fertilizer.

Sustainable mulch

You can get great mulch by shredding leaves. Here at Garden in the Woods, the horticulture team removes the majority of leaves from our garden beds, shred them, and use them as winter mulch. We also pile and save them for springtime mulch. Be aware that bark mulch is an un-ecological and unsustainable gardening practice. The huge amounts of carbon input to create mulch and the large deforestation projects that are required to generate huge amounts of mulch will, over time, break the ecological bank and disrupt the natural ecosystem.

Leaves can also be used for inexpensive green ideas. Don’t limit yourself to composting and mulching—think outside the pile. Leaves make a great fence. During the Garden’s 2007 Art Goes Wild exhibit, we showcased a beautiful composting leaf column fence. (Directions on building your own leaf column fence.)

Bagging leaves in biodegradable bags and putting them around the foundation of your house can provide additional insulation during winter months. Some of our prudent volunteers simply cover plants they couldn’t to plant in time with a pile of leaves. They reported having great success overwintering them and were able to plant them in the spring.

Being green and having fun

Lastly, be creative, have fun, and involve your family. Plan an autumn hike to collect the best leaves and bring them home. Press them and mount them for beautiful “green” art. Fill a glass bowl with leaves, pine, and cones for a stunning fall centerpiece. Make a cool mosaic of leaves. Get two pieces of glass from the hardware store and press your most interesting and colorful leaves in between them for a cool window hanging.

The classic fall leaf man with a pumpkin head can make anyone smile. Be green, get exercise, and rake a huge pile of leaves and dive in. I don’t care how old you are, a good, old fashioned roll in the leaves will take ten, twenty, thirty years off, if only for a minute! 

Just imagine as you roll around that you’re in a big pile of money that you can spend on a healthy environment. You can bank on it!