Amy Draiss
Gardeners are far from lazy. It takes a lot of effort to create and maintain a beautiful outdoor space, but there’s no reason to work harder than necessary.
Fall is traditionally a time to clean up the garden, raking and disposing of leaves, cutting back and getting rid of dead perennials or annuals, mulching beds, and more.
But what if you took a lazier approach to fall garden cleanup this year? It turns out, there are good reasons to skip or scale back on some of these chores. Here’s what you need to know.
Why Doing Less Can Be More in the Fall Garden
One reason not to go overboard with fall garden cleanup is that it simply isn’t necessary. There are some basic fall dos and don'ts to explore. Firstly, you don’t need to create a pristine space for a healthy or productive garden. In fact, doing so can, in some ways, harm your garden. For instance, totally raking out and tilling beds so they’re barren in preparation for spring can actually damage soil structure, encourage compaction, promote erosion, and unbalance microorganism ecosystems. Cover crops can help recharge your soil over winter and reduce erosion.
Perhaps the most important reason to be a little lazier in the fall and use the no fall cleanup approach is to support wildlife. A messy garden is more natural, which means it better supports native species. For example, leaf litter is literally a breeding ground for pollinators, including butterfly and moth caterpillars.
Leaving Leaves in Place
The biggest fall chore for many gardeners and homeowners is raking and disposing of leaves. The standard way to manage fallen leaves is to get them all into bags and have them picked up for disposal. The other extreme is to leave them all in place where they fall. Neither option is ideal.
Leaving a thick layer of leaves on the lawn can kill the grass underneath. On the other hand, leaf litter plays host to eggs for many beneficial insects and is a habitat for other small animals. You can find a happy medium by only raking up some leaves where they fall most thickly. Also, instead of disposing of all the leaves, use some of them to mulch garden beds. Leaf mold is one of the best eco-friendly mulches. Or, you can add leaves to your compost pile as needed. Looking to up your composting game? This large outdoor composting bin from Amazon has enough space to fit your leaves, grass clippings, and food waste and turn it all into black gold.
Leave Flower Heads in Place
Another traditional fall chore is to cut back and remove all perennials. This makes beds look tidy and can help you jump-start spring bed preparation, but there are some plants you should never prune in the fall. Additionally, as with fallen leaves, leaving this plant matter can support wildlife.
You might want to remove a lot of the leaves of spent perennials to avoid rot and the spread of disease. But, try to leave flower stalks and seedheads in place. These will feed birds throughout the winter. When snow covers your lawn and beds, any tall seedheads left in place act as a lifeline to hungry animals. Hollow flower stalks and stems act as bee hotels that help pollinators overwinter.
You can also leave sturdy, healthy foliage in place to provide some shelter for small animals. Many gorgeous fall ornamental grasses, for example, can be left all winter. Not only do they support wildlife, but they also add visual interest to the winter garden.
Avoid Pruning in Fall
Most plants should not be pruned in the fall, so you can mostly cross this chore off your list. Pruning in the fall for most plants is a bad idea because doing so stimulates new growth that will be damaged in the colder weather to come. There are some exceptions, so know your plants and their ideal pruning times. Another exception is for disease. Remove any diseased plant matter you find. Do not compost it.
Don’t Overdo Bed Preparation
Many gardeners use fall chore time to clean up beds and prepare them for the following spring. This is great, but don’t overdo it. While pulling up any remaining weeds can be useful, tilling the soil in beds can can be one of the worst weeding mistakes because it spreads weed seeds. Pulling out all plants and leaving bare soil exposes your beds to erosion and compaction and disrupts microorganisms.
Instead of going overboard on this chore, get a little lazy. Leave healthy, sturdy perennials in place, including seed heads. Pull some weeds, but don’t work the soil. Add some mulch or raked leaves, but not too much. Too much mulching is hard work and is also bad for plants that can get suffocated by dense layers of mulch and leaves.
Don’t Remove All Lawn and Garden Debris
Again, messy is natural, so don’t go for perfection when cleaning up debris like sticks, stumps, and dead trees, also known as snags. These items in the landscape are important habitats. They provide shelter and food for all kinds of insects, small mammals, and snakes that are native to your ecosystem.
So don’t make a big fall project out of removing snags, big, downed branches, or stumps. Leave them in place. Of course, the location of a fallen branch or tree might be inconvenient, so another option is to move it to a corner of the yard. You can even create a debris pile to host native wildlife and turn your yard into a wildlife habitat. Keep an eye on animals in your wildlife-friendly garden with a backyard wildlife camera from Birdfy.
More Tips for Lazy Gardeners
Even with a lazier approach to fall cleanup, chores must be tackled to some degree. Here are some tips to make it easier and to work more efficiently.
- Do chores a little bit at a time. If you only have 15 minutes, use that time to pull a few weeds or spread a little mulch. Bit by bit, you’ll get it done.
- Tidy one area of the garden at a time. Getting one area right is satisfying and will inspire you to move on to the next.
- Focus on the areas you can see. Prioritize limited time by tackling areas of the garden visible from the house. The rest can wait.
- Take plenty of breaks if you’re working all day. Working for hours at a time can be counterproductive and leave you exhausted, sore, or even injured. Investing in a sturdy, foldable garden kneeler like this one from Amazon can help you stay comfortable and safe as you work.
Hopefully, these fall cleanup tips will help you to slow down a little and take a load off this fall. There is plenty of time to work next spring.
