Althouse: "Leaves have fallen for millions of years, so of course plants and animals have come to expect or even rely on them to complete their life cycles."

October 11, 2025

"Leaves have fallen for millions of years, so of course plants and animals have come to expect or even rely on them to complete their life cycles."

"It’s our job as ecological gardeners to figure out how to incorporate these natural processes into our landscapes in ways that are both functional and beautiful."

Said Rebecca McMackin, the lead horticulturist for the American Horticultural Society, quoted in "Why Leaving the Leaves Is Better for Your Yard/Keeping leaves in your yard can bolster the number and variety of species around — and the perks go beyond just the fall season" (NYT).

27 comments:

Achilles said...: I try to tell my wife that the world does not like lawns and that they are ugly. Sweeping up all of the stuff on the ground and putting it in bags and sending it to the landfill is pointless and the animals like brush.

We have a lawn.

It is a stupid I want to be back in England thing. The ground naturally looks like a lawn in places in England.; 10/11/25, 8:39 AM
Jamie said...: Grassy monoculture lawns aren't remotely natural. A yard of grass with scattered trees isn't a very natural landscape. Grass doesn't naturally support the critters that rely on leaf fall, surely.

The "oak park woodlands" of, say, the Sierra Nevada foothills and Vaca Hills of northern California (these look like a great yard with scattered trees) are land cultivated by the local indigenous peoples - underbrush cleared so that the oak trees' bounty of acorns was more easily harvestable, at least according to a geography prof in northern CA whose lectures stuck with me.

This said, I'm a big fan of mulching your leaves - especially since the one year that we raked and bagged the leaves on our one acre in PA and came up with ONE HUNDRED bags of leaves.; 10/11/25, 8:46 AM
rehajm said...: I’m all on board with that idea but it’s a diy project and my yard is too large and unwieldy for one putterer. Hiring help is a problem because all the ‘landscapers’ are mow and blow and we have thirty seconds of mowing with their fairway mowers. We need constant tree and bush trimming they do 2x year. I talked the flower lady into doing it and they are great but she’s still the formal flower bed lady so $$$ for whatever the garden center is peddling. The deer love it all except the salvia…when we get a week without rain I’m scolded because the beds ‘look a little dry’. Plants don’t like mud…; 10/11/25, 8:48 AM
rehajm said...: Fall Burn piles were always the thing in Vermont this time of year…until hunting season started…; 10/11/25, 8:50 AM
Jamie said...: I meant "grassy," not "great"!

England used to be largely woodlands, I gather - though I don't have a source on tap. Those lawns - first, I remember an exhibit of grass at Kew Gardens that really annoyed my Southern California husband, because it was not monoculture; there were five or six species of grass in each little plot. Not an American look.

Second, I'm remembering a quote from some American who, upon visiting a great house in Britain, commented on the smooth, emerald beauty of the expansive lawn, and the gardener answered something like, "it helps to have 500 years of tending."; 10/11/25, 8:54 AM
Enigma said...: Grass is a functional tool for outdoor activities. There was a park "designed by committee" near where I used to live. It had:

50% dedicated to a "pro environment" nature trail with a winding path, trees, and native plants

10% for a children's playground

10% for a dog run

10% for a picnic area

10% for walkways

10% for a LAWN. The lawn saw 90% of the use and was often packed with stuff. Despite the dog run nearby, dog pee routinely killed the grass and left dead spots.; 10/11/25, 8:57 AM
Charlie Currie said...: If you have a forest or woodland, leave the leaves. If you have a garden, clear the leaves. Non garden friendly pests over winter in the leaves and come out in the spring to devour your garden. So, clean up the leaves in fall or spray the insects with pollinator killing insecticide.; 10/11/25, 8:58 AM
Aggie said...: What we need are more leaf blowers. And let's not forget Stella, the leaf-pile jumping retriever. Lawns are beautiful things that evoke the civilized world, made for kids and lounging on, listening to music, for city babes catching sun on a spring day. Only a humorless scold would say that lawns are wrong-headed.

Our lawn is surrounded by motts of oaks, elms, jaupon holley. The leaves are swept by the wind and trapped in the motts, where they quietly mulch and keep the moisture levels regulated for the trees, as nature intended.; 10/11/25, 9:02 AM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: I read this here before. I know I did because at the time I read it I made a mental picture of creepy crawlers using curled up dead leaves as a shelter and this mental imagery has never receded.; 10/11/25, 9:18 AM
Jamie said...: Aggie @9:02, your yard sounds perfect for me!; 10/11/25, 9:21 AM
Jersey Fled said...: I blow the leaves over each of my gardens and borders. Makes a great natural ground cover. And saves me the work of putting them out at the curb.; 10/11/25, 9:29 AM
Joe Bar said...: Our house is surrounded by trees, and there is no lawn. The leaves stay under the trees, and form the natural forest floor. We DO, however blow the leaves from the walkways, driveway and garden. Mrs. Bar really doesn't want a "variety and number of species" consuming the tomatoes.; 10/11/25, 9:41 AM
Jaq said...: Earthworms came with the Virginia colonist, well in the parts where glaciers wiped out native worms.
ChatGPT:
There were (and still are) native species in unglaciated regions, like the southern U.S. and parts of the Pacific coast, but the forests that regrew in formerly glaciated regions developed without worms for thousands of years.; 10/11/25, 9:45 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "I read this here before. I know I did because at the time I read it I made a mental picture of creepy crawlers using curled up dead leaves as a shelter and this mental imagery has never receded."

I've blogged this topic before, probably more than once before, but this is a new article in the NYT.; 10/11/25, 9:58 AM
Wince said...: Don’t ticks reproduce and lay in wait amongst leaves? And wet leaves clump and kill the grass below? I have them dumped over a berm where they compost in the wooded area below.; 10/11/25, 9:58 AM
boatbuilder said...: The leaves of many tree species have ph and/or chemical properties which discourage the growth of other plants. If you don't mulch the leaves they will form relatively impermeable mats which block water and nutrients and make great spots for breeding mosquitoes. Your grass will die. You will get a dead bare place.

Trim the trees up, mulch the leaves or blow them into the woods. Plant shade loving shrubs and perennials.; 10/11/25, 9:59 AM
n.n said...: Millions of years with assumption, assertion of uniformity. Evolution is a chaotic system and process.; 10/11/25, 10:00 AM
Enigma said...: Beloved black walnut -- of dark wood furniture fame -- poisons the soil around itself (see juglone toxin).

Smelly creosote bush in the southwestern deserts poisons the soil and creates endless miles of monoculture all by itself.

Several water plants (such as cattails and water hyacinth) are invasive and fill up natural lakes and rivers.; 10/11/25, 10:08 AM
boatbuilder said...: Our new place has about 6 acres of what was formerly mowed grass/horse pasture. We kept about an acre of grass around the house and are converting the rest to a native plant meadow. Unfortunately this was a banner year for crabgrass so the meadow plants are not doing as well as they might, but we are assured by the pros that time will resolve the issue (hah!).
Anyway it beats acres of lawn, and I don't have to mow it or pay to get it done. I figure the savings in mowing alone will pay for the meadow in a couple of years.; 10/11/25, 10:08 AM
Original Mike said...: "I've blogged this topic before, probably more than once before, "

Annual PSA.; 10/11/25, 10:10 AM
Original Mike said...: Everybody seems to have a woods they can blow their leaves into.; 10/11/25, 10:12 AM
Brian McKim and/or Traci Skene said...: Listening to these experts, on might get the impression that nature never adapts to changes.; 10/11/25, 10:42 AM
Mr. Forward said...: No Mow May, now No Rake October. How about No Sweat August and No Shovel February? That still leaves eight months but it’s time for my nap.; 10/11/25, 11:42 AM
The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...: Meh. My backyard drops steeply into a densely wooded ravine that can absorb untold tons of biomass without a belch. We dropped the giant maple trees, that used to shower my house and lawn with leaves, into that ravine. A couple months later I couldn’t even see where their trunks lay.

Articles like this always read more like welcome excuses for bougie-Progs to not attend to their property. I’ve noticed the trend in many a Seattle and Olympia neighborhood. Self-congratulatory laziness.; 10/11/25, 12:26 PM
The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...: Given that property-owning bougie-Progs are probably increasingly likely to skew elderly, it isn’t hard to see why the let-it-lie recommendation would be enthusiastically received.; 10/11/25, 12:39 PM
Tina Trent said...: I'd like an acre of monkey grass around the house, just to keep the mud down and the tall grass at bay. It does get the cats stoned, so maybe they could pay for it.*

I'd also like to go back in history and stop the first yard jerk who planted a Sweetgum Tree.

The deer are getting their rut on, and the male ones are rubbing all the bark off one tree in the area they rut in. It's the dawn and dusk deer discotech.

Which seems to be working up the solitary bull next door, who is lonely and howls all day and night. I wish they would do something about that, but I don't know what that thing would be, and I probably helped make it illegal in the state code.

And like magic, the thicket of Joro spiderwebs have disappeared from under the house. Where did they go this time? What I don't understand about nature could fill a book.

Well, it's almost time to go log on to that massive, nonexistent, nationwide ANTIFA zoom. Hilariously, given the earlier post, they'll be talking about manipulating messaging.

*Don't bother trying to eat enough monkeygrass to get stoned if you are a human. Unless you need to puke a hairball.; 10/11/25, 2:14 PM
Tina Trent said...: I mean later post.; 10/11/25, 2:21 PM