It's long been thought that autumn leaves in yards should be bagged up and hauled off. But there's a new message out now: Leave the leaves. The Missouri Prairie Foundation even has a sign you can purchase on their website to encourage other homeowners to do the same, it reads: "Leave the leaves. No fall cleanup necessary," and perhaps the most educational message: "This native garden provides winter habitat for pollinators and other wildlife."
Loring Bullard is an environmentalist who lives in Springfield's Rountree neighborhood.
"I didn't think about this much until just a few years ago, when I read a book by Doug Tallamy called "The Nature of Oaks," and it sort of opened my eyes to some things that I hadn't really thought about much before," he said, "You know, a lot of people like to attract birds and wildlife to their yards these days. People are planting vegetation, trees and flowers and things, native flowers in an attempt to try to attract wildlife, birds and bees, butterflies, bats and other things. And when I read Tallamy's book about oak trees, it sort of dawned on me that we're really shooting ourselves in the foot when we rake up and remove all the leaves, blow or rake all the leaves off of our yards and haul them away."
That's because a lot of food for birds is found in the leaves. According to Bullard, Tallamy determined that over 500 species of caterpillars use oak trees, one of our native trees in the Ozarks.
When you remove the leaves, you are removing a huge source of food for birds.
Another problem caused by removing leaves: Noise, said Bullard.
When people use leaf blowers, he said, it creates noise pollution, among other things.
"I started reading more about leaf blowers themselves and the fact that they produce so much not only air pollution and noise pollution, but can cause things like allergies and symptoms of respiratory illness from all the dust and pollen and mold spores and everything that's kicked up when you when you blow the leaves," he said. "So, you know, it's kind of a long term thing, but I think we just need to get people thinking more about what they're doing with the leaves. You know, we people want trees in the yard, but they don't want leaves. It's kind of an oxymoron, you know, in some ways to to want to have trees, but you don't want to have you want deciduous trees like oaks, the native trees, which are best because they do host so many species of insects and things that birds need. But then we want to remove all the the leaves, which are a big source of food for the birds."
He hopes by spreading the message, leave the leaves, more people will jump on board.
"It's an ecological perspective that I think more and more people are starting to kind of connect the dots in their mind with, in terms of what I'm doing in my yard can have a big impact on the ecology, which is good for, if we think about that, it's good for all of us," he said. "It's not just in our yard, it's good for everyone if we can just kind of think more ecologically in our yards."
Here's more information about leaving leaves on your yard:
Missouri Prairie Foundation, Grow Native!
U.S. Department of Agriculture
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