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LOADINGERROR LOADING Looking for a reason to skip out on raking the leaves in your yard? We’ve got it for you: The fall chore is not only annoying, it’s also harmful to the environment. While many people spend hours and hours of their fall weekends raking or removing leaves, the activity can actually harm your soil, your plants and the insects that inhabit your area. Advertisement Here’s what to know: Leaf litter supports animal habitats, provides food and promotes growth. “When we look at our landscapes and our gardens ... the kind of classic image of the suburban neighborhood is neatly mown grass, a few trees spread out, maybe some flower borders around the house, but essentially very clean, very manicured, very carefully managed landscapes,” said Matthew Shepherd, the director of outreach and education at the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation has a fall and winter campaign known as “Leave the Leaves,” which aims to spread the word on the harm of getting rid of leaf litter. “And in creating those landscapes, we’ve done away with all the diversity of structure and all those little nooks and crannies where wildlife, where insects and others can can live,” Shepherd added, including fireflies, bumblebees, frogs and moths. “When we clear the leaves, we’re doing away with all of that,” Shepherd said. “We’re raking, we’re blowing all that wildlife away and disposing of it alongside our leaves.” Advertisement And a lot of these small insects are then food for bigger animals like sparrows and robins. “We work to support the wildlife at the bottom of the food chain that supports so much else and makes for a healthy environment,” Shepherd explained. Fallen leaves also benefit your soil and reduce stormwater runoff. Leaf litter increases the amount of nutrients in your soil, which allows plants to more easily grow in your yard, said Eloise Gayer, a horticulturist at the Morris Arboretum and Gardens of the University of Pennsylvania. Advertisement “You have better microbial and bacterial life living in there. Plants grow better. It’s just a win all around,” Gayer explained. As leaves break down, they release nutrients into your soil that are good for growing seasons all year round. “By retaining leaves, you can increase the carbon content of your soil ... and [carbon is] really good for plants to grow,” Shepherd said. Fallen leaves can also be used as mulch, which not only is a boon to your plants but is a money-saver, too. “Leaf litter is really, really good for soil because it makes it a little bit more porous. [It] can absorb rainwater a lot better,” Gayer added. Advertisement Leaf litter can also protect your soil from compaction, which happens when walking on the grass, mowing it or when it’s raining, Gayer said, adding, “All this compaction leads to a lot of stormwater runoff.” Runoff can harm the environment by spreading things like chemicals and dirt into waterways. This doesn’t mean you can’t rake up any leaves at all. Leaving fallen leaves all over your yard may not be an aesthetic choice, nor is it a safe one. Since leaf litter can be slippery, most people want leaves away from walkways and areas with high foot traffic ― and that’s OK. “You don’t have to suddenly stop managing leaves entirely. There’s definitely a balance that can be reached,” Gayer said. Advertisement “For the typical garden, you’re not going to be keeping all the leaves everywhere they fall,” Shepherd said. Take an inventory of your yard to determine the places where leaves can and can’t stay, Gayer suggested. There are definitive places where leaves are problematic, such as drains, driveways and walking paths, “so, you’re going to move them away from there,” according to Shepherd. “There are times when a too-dense or too-thick layer of leaves can smother your grass,” Shepherd said, which would also be a reason to want to remove leaves. Advertisement There may also be parts of your yard where you want to have green grass, so leaf litter won’t be a fit there. “But if you look around your garden, you’re going to find places where you can keep leaves — maybe that is around the outer edges of your yard, maybe where you already have trees ... maybe you have a hedgerow or a fence line, and you can move leaves up closer to the base of that,” Shepherd said. When it comes to actually moving your leaves, you’ll want to follow a few rules to protect the biodiversity. “What I think is more damaging than the raking itself is the shredding. So, the mowers and and the big leaf trucks that come through and collect and grind up people’s leaves is really what is destroying the habitat,” Gayer said. YourSupportMakes The Story Your SupportFuelsOur Mission Your SupportFuelsOur Mission Join Those Who Make It Possible HuffPost stands apart because we report for the people, not the powerful. Our journalism is fearless, inclusive, and unfiltered. Join the membership program and help strengthen news that puts people first. We remain committed to providing you with the unflinching, fact-based journalism everyone deserves. Thank you again for your support along the way. We’re truly grateful for readers like you! Your initial support helped get us here and bolstered our newsroom, which kept us strong during uncertain times. Now as we continue, we need your help more than ever. We hope you will join us once again. We remain committed to providing you with the unflinching, fact-based journalism everyone deserves. Thank you again for your support along the way. We’re truly grateful for readers like you! Your initial support helped get us here and bolstered our newsroom, which kept us strong during uncertain times. Now as we continue, we need your help more than ever. We hope you will join us once again. Support HuffPost Already a member? Log in to hide these messages. You can move leaves around your yard pretty safely, but when you get into cutting the leaves up, that’s going to have a detrimental impact on the insects that use the leaf litter, Gayer said. Advertisement No matter where you decide to move your leaves in your yard, you can take comfort in knowing you don’t have to spend hours on end raking up every single leaf in your yard. Instead, you can move some around to appropriate spots to help the environment thrive.
