Our neighborhood in Charlottesville is hilly and the developer thoughtfully left as many of the old-growth trees as possible. There are many leaves, but not much traditional grassy-lawn area; as a result we are spared the misery of the fall leaf-blowing season, which is the bane of many friends' existences in town! I rake around the driveway and walkways, and compost a lot of leaves, to be sure. But I read that fireflies make their homes in fallen leaves, so when one of the endless parade of landscape companies comes to my door with an offer to clean up my yard, I tell them it is the Firefly Habitat and cannot be disturbed.
We have a large city lot (.18 acres) with a few trees. To avoid bagging leaves, we have a compost bin made of old pallets lined with chicken wire in one corner of our yard, tucked up against our neighbor's garage. In areas where the leaf coverage is heavy, I compost about half the leaves. Then I attach the bag to my lawnmower, scoop up about half of what's left, and dump the bag on the areas of my yard with sparse leaf cover. Then I mow over the entire lawn with the mulching plug in. You get to keep the leaf nutrients and the mower breaks the leaves down fine enough that it really doesn't look like you left the leaves in place.
Our neighborhood in Charlottesville is hilly and the developer thoughtfully left as many of the old-growth trees as possible. There are many leaves, but not much traditional grassy-lawn area; as a result we are spared the misery of the fall leaf-blowing season, which is the bane of many friends' existences in town! I rake around the driveway and walkways, and compost a lot of leaves, to be sure. But I read that fireflies make their homes in fallen leaves, so when one of the endless parade of landscape companies comes to my door with an offer to clean up my yard, I tell them it is the Firefly Habitat and cannot be disturbed.
We have a large city lot (.18 acres) with a few trees. To avoid bagging leaves, we have a compost bin made of old pallets lined with chicken wire in one corner of our yard, tucked up against our neighbor's garage. In areas where the leaf coverage is heavy, I compost about half the leaves. Then I attach the bag to my lawnmower, scoop up about half of what's left, and dump the bag on the areas of my yard with sparse leaf cover. Then I mow over the entire lawn with the mulching plug in. You get to keep the leaf nutrients and the mower breaks the leaves down fine enough that it really doesn't look like you left the leaves in place.