Not tidying garden

love it

I've persuaded my other half to not do his usual Autumn cutting back ( I call it his scorched earth policy!). I watched Gardeners World recently and there was a visit to a garden with a massive herbaceous border that they left untouched until the spring. Lots of seed heads and foliage for birds and insects which is so important. We will cut back our Cosmos when they have finished, we have had a wonderful display every year and they will last until the first frost but everything else will be left.

Battery leaf blowers pile leaves under shrubs and into borders.

Each year we take at least 10-15 big builder's sacks of leaves to the tip for composting. If we left them they would kill all the grass because it is smothered by them and it is far too much for us to compost.

Thankfully raking leaves in Autumn is my number one favourite garden task and it is worth it just to be surrounded by so many wonderful forest sized trees.

I have loads of cyclamen ready to go into my windowboxes but I still have marigolds and petunias in flower.

We have to take sacks of leaves for composting as well M0nica. It's all very well saying leave them if you don't have many but when you're surrounded by trees you could drown in leaves. We always leave them around the fence line under the shrubs, along with some piles of logs. We have two huge oak trees in our garden, one front and back, and another five or six nearby, as well as two silver birches, three or four hazels next door and a couple of large maples. We never tidy the rest of the garden until the Spring though.

I bought special leaf composter sacks last year.They seem to be made of some kind of hessian, eco friendly any way and should turn leaves into compost in 6-12 months. So I filled several sacks with leaves and popped them behind my garage. Last week I thought I would see if they had turned to compost so I could move them to the vegetable plot. Not quite but lol when I went to move them the bottom of the bags fell apart. I now have a big pile of bits of hessian and almost leaf mould in a big heap behind the garage.

When we first moved in and the trees were much smaller we used to just put all the leaves in black bin bags and pile them up for a year. That didn't work too well, oak leaves don't decompose quickly. So we put them through the shredder to break them down first, which worked a bit better. The next year we shredded them then left them for two years, which worked very well. But by that time we had ten black bags to store each year so we piled them as well as we could near the shed and ended up with rats and mice setting up home over the Winter in the nice warm leaves. We did see a fox nestled down occasionally, which was nice, but the bags had to go because of the rats and mice. We still shred a few bags and leave them to rot in the garden each year. Then there are the acorns and the hazel nuts to gather up, and next year all the digging out of oak trees and hazels ... I'll never buy a house again with so many trees near by.

I feel tired just reading the comments here😂
Am glad for a change, that I only have a back yard to clear up with some pots in it.
I like the sound of the mice enjoying the cosy leaves.🐭🐭🍃

Yes, few of the trees are in our garden. The main problem is out the front. We live in a tree lined avenue, forest trees: limes and chestnuts. The road runs east west and there is a long gravel access road that ends at our house with a brick wall gong across the access road.

As I said the access road goes east west,and is several hundred yards tree lined yards long, the prevailing winds are westerly and the wall is at the eastern end, so all the leaves get blown down the road and pile up our side of the brick wall. So we have to clear them up - or leave them, which is notr eally an option.