Disappearing under a carpet if leaves.

Wait until all the leaves are down. With global warning that is now December and only then get someone in to rake/blow them into heaps, bag them and cart to the tip.

The only reason we will leave our current house is when the garden becomes too much to cope with and I know, much as I enjoy raking leaves, the day will come when it is more than I can cope with.

We have a stand of trees at the back of our garden but all the leaves end up on the adjacent farm, so DH walks up the road 2 or 3 times each Autumn with a wheel barrow collecting all the fallen leaves and bags them up.

Its a tricky one. Having to move because of leaves or because the garden is too much to handle. Hope you can make the right decision for you.
I downsized because the house & garden were too big and now, with a small garden, spend my time clearing leaves from my neighbour's trees one of which towers above his house and manages to miss most of his garden dumping the majority in mine!. He has a blower but never offers to blow on my side of the wall, but he's a curmudgeonly old g**. Next time I'll move to the middle of a treeless field with no old g**'s in sight ?

Thank you all for your helpful advice. I think the garden has got too much, I am so nervous about upping sticks after a lifetime here, but I have to face it. To leave the amount of leaves I get would result in my lawn disappearing.

Leaves were being blown into large piles at our gable end and up against the fences, DH e-mailed the council yesterday and they arrived this morning and swept them up and removed them. Result, I didn't know they did this as we haven't seen a street cleaner for years.

It was a relief to arrive home and find that the gardeners had been round to clear most of the leaves. The green bin was full to the top and rather heavy for me to haul out to the front for collection. The very tall birch across the brook that carpets my garden with its leaves is almost bare and with any luck the wind will change to the east and blow the remaining leaves into another person's garden.

GabriellaG, one of my cherry trees has drooping branches laden with double white flowers, and the other has pink double flowers. Both the trees' dying leaves when they fall are almost like a golden light source on the ground including on dull days.

We now use a leaf blower to blow the leaves into large piles then rake them into skip bags and take them to the local green recycling centre. To finish off we cut the grass on high which Hoovers the rest of the leaves up and leaves stripes on the lawn. When we left the leaves to rot the grass underneath suffered and it is now in much better condition.

I have 22 fieldmaples in my Garden and this year seem to have more leaves than ever. I have put some into compost bins and the rest I have raked off lawn and back underneath the trees, just hoping wind doesn't whip them back onto lawn!

We used to do the same Esmerelda, then one year Himself opened the kitchen door and an avalanche of leaves fell in. It was the last straw in a haystack of reasons to move.

We now have just a large walnut tree to deal with. Walnut leaves are one of the few things which should not be put into compost and have to be raked up and taken to the tip!

If you allow the leaves to stay on your lawn they will damage the grass. My solution is to use a leaf blower to blast them all off the grass and onto the flower beds or underneath the shrubs where they do no harm and enrich the soil. The worms pull them underground and come the spring they are all gone. No raking up, no bagging up and no trips to the recycling centre. Oh, and no back ache either!

Having just spent an hour yesterday clearing leaves,again, I can really sympathise with you. My thigh muscles are really hurting with all the bending. My husband blows the leaves into a big pile and then we both pick them up and put them in the bin. We have filled two wheelie bins and are only half way through the garden.
I love the colours of Autumn but wish leaves self destructed!

Alexa
I didn't hear you.
I asked what colour blossom your cherry trees are.

I've collected 2 large bin liners of leaves, probably another bag to fill then that will be it for this year. The leaves were all wet so I've knotted the bags, stabbed a few holes in them and put them under the hedge. Within a year or so they will have rotted and made lovely leaf mould to spread on the garden and improve the soil.

We are surrounded by enormous oak trees which look glorious all summer but right now as they shed their leaves are driving us to distraction. I bag up around 30 binbags of them and store them behind the shed to rot down, after a year or so they make beautiful loam. The rest, I’ve swept into a large pile which I keep adding to and goodness only knows what will happen, but to be honest, my will to move them off the lawn has upped and gone!

LuckyLegs, I have lots of leaves from a large old oak, an ash, and four high hawthorns, not to mention my two ornamental cherries.

My front garden is all gravelled and I enjoy the autumn colours of the leaves as they are new fallen . Later when they have rotted down the wind has whipped them up against the hedge and by late spring they have disappeared.

I never sweep them up.

Luckylegs Think yourself fortunate the leaves are only a once a year event. How would you like to find bamboo shooting through your lawn non stop like I do following my neighbours decision they wanted a bamboo hedge to mark our boundary. Anyone else would have chosen privet.

MOnica - your post reminded me that when we built a new house on a plot which belonged and adjoined what was run as a market garden . We were surrounded with some pretty big trees but the advice I was given by one of the older gardeners was to "look up and when all the branches were bare that was when to start lifting the leaves"!!

8 barrow loads of leaves from the front garden this morning. Back garden is a sea of oak leaves. Still it is good excercise .

I get our local council leaf clearer to empty his machine into my compost bin and it makes wonderful leaf mould/mulch for digging into the soil.

Jalima Your DH is quite right. However in our garden most of the lawn leaves get blown into the flower beds eventually because of the way the wind blows across the garden. It does the tidying up for us! I forgot about that when I posted. My DH has found leaf mold excellent when planting bulbs and roses.

LuckyLegs9 If you are able to bag up the leaves but don't want to keep them, you could put the bags by your front gate with a sign saying 'Ready Bagged Leaves. DIY Leaf Mould. Free' There may be local people who don't have trees near them but would like to use leaf mould, its hard to find in the shops. We regularly do this with surplus plants and produce.

they will feed the lawn and flower beds if left in situ
DH said they're fine left on the flower beds etc but not on the lawn - they may encourage moss to grow apparently, and so does cutting the lawn too short at this time of year.
I take his word for it.

Some good advice generally so I don't have a lot to add.

If you have some bagged up already and you have space to store these then just put puncture holes in the bag and they will rot down to make great leaf mould for the garden. It does take on average 2 years but is excellent for the garden. If you have no room to store these then contact your nearest allotment associations and I'm sure they will gladly take them away as they will have space to store and rot down. Any surplus sweep into the borders and it will rot down naturally.

Watching Monty Don on his gardening programmes, he had some sort of wooden enclosure were he raked up the leaves and then put them in this to rot down for mulch. Could you maybe get something like this ready made from a garden centre, or a local joiner make you one. This way you could just keep adding the leaves into it and eventually they will rot down to mulch and can then be used to protect various plants and shrubs in your garden. The one Monty used had removable planks that built up as necessary and equally taken off individually when mulch ready to use.
PS I realise that MD had a very large garden to deal with, but this idea could be scaled back for a smaller garden.

Yes they will. But why not invest in one of those leaf vacuums?