Joanna Brichetto taking leaves in Nashville, Tenn. Credit: MICHAEL ROSE
Monica Schaefer drove up and down the streets of Kingston, N.Y., one recent evening scanning the roadside for other people’s leaves.
T he 39-year-old pulled up to a cluster of brown paper bags. Marvin Warren, a fellow leaf thief who lives nearby, was already there. The two stood on the sidewalk answering questions from a confused homeowner, then turned to the task of figuring out who should take home this haul. This would be Schaefer’s day, they decided.
“I’m picky about my leaves,” said Warren, a 42-year-old landscape designer and contractor who uses they as a pronoun and wants extra leaves in their yard for mulch and compost. Warren isn’t a fan of oak leaves that decompose more slowly than some other varieties.
Schaffer was happy to have this take, which she brought home and redistributed in her yard for mulch. “But I also want to save all the critters who live in them,” she said.
While most Americans toil every fall to rid their lawns of leaves, raking and blowing them away to be bagged up and sent off, a growing group see them as a valuable resource. Fallen leaves provide winter habitat to butterflies, birds and other species, as well as free fertilizer and moisture retention for trees and plants, say proponents who often use the slogan “leave the leaves” to promote the idea.
Ecologists have championed the concept for years. Traditional American lawns with their mowed grass and leaf-free winter garden beds are a waste of what could be healthy habitat, they say. If lawns were used to grow more plants native to their region, that would create habitat for animals, say some ecologists and landscape experts.
The slogan “leave the leaves” took off online after a 2014 blog post the National Wildlife Federation advocated leaving leaves to create winter habitat for salamanders, insects, box turtles and toads, and as free mulch and fertilizer.
Justin Wheeler pushed the #leavetheleaves hashtag in 2017 as social-media leader for the Xerces Society, a group working to preserve habitat for invertebrates, named after an extinct blue-winged butterfly. “If you plant a thriving pollinator garden in the summer and then, come fall, you sanitize the landscape,” you kill many species you worked all summer to preserve, he said.
The slogan quickly got picked up on social media and in articles, said Wheeler. It also sparked confusion and backlash.
Online, people shot back that leaves could spread plant diseases, harbor ticks and kill mowed grass. Wheeler said it was hard for people to understand that “leave the leaves” might mean using them as mulch in tree and shrub beds, not blanketing grass. Wheeler, who now works for another organization, said he stopped posting online about leaves in his own neighborhood groups due to the backlash.
“Leaves and leaf blowers are the most controversial things you can talk about outside of politics,” he said.
The slogan “sometimes does the idea a disservice because people think it means, leave the leaves on my lawn—that will kill my lawn,” said Pam Ford, a Penn State University Master Gardener, a volunteer group certified by the university to advise gardeners on research-based land-management practices.
“What I would like it to mean is, leaves are valuable,” said Ford, who specializes in pollinator conservation. She advises raking leaves under the trees from which they came or into garden beds to add nutrients and create habitat. Designing leaf-holding areas with neat edges can also help meet neighbors’ expectations for a manicured lawn, she said.
Leaves can harbor ticks and some types of plant disease over the winter, say some scientists and academic researchers.
“Leave the leaves” proponents say gardeners should protect themselves from ticks with clothes, repellent and frequent tick-checks while doing yard work regardless of their leaf choices, and can move leaf piles farther from frequently used yard areas if concerned.
M att Zaff, a 37-year-old garden enthusiast, said he stopped raking leaves off his grass in Morrisville, Penn., about three years ago when he learned they are important habitats for insects. So far his grass is fine because the leaves decompose by spring, he said.
This year he wanted more. “I “rescued” 35 bags of leaves from my neighborhood this morning!,” Zaff posted on Facebook last month next to photos of leaves in brown paper Home Depot bags. He packed six to eight bags at a time into his Subaru Outback to use as mulch for hedges and trees and as part of his backyard compost, he said.
Leaf thieves don’t report much resistance. They often move at night after work, and are taking something people intend to get rid of, they say.
James Nagengast, an information-security auditor who lives in Shrewsbury, Mass., rings people’s doorbells before taking off with their leaves. “Hey, not to be weird, but can I take your brown bagged leaves,” he said he asks potential targets. “No one ever says no, but they always look at me like, ‘why?’”
This month, after his town stopped collecting leaves for the fall, someone found one of his leaf posts on Facebook and asked if they could drop off bags. “Now they bring them to me,” he said.
Joanna Brichetto, a 58-year-old writer and naturalist, said she gently nudges her neighbors into better lawn management by answering questions about her own native plant gardens and lawn care.
One of them is Kara Kroeger, a 28-year-old senior financial analyst at nearby Vanderbilt University and first-time yard owner. Kroeger said that when Brichetto saw her husband raking leaves last year, she came over and asked if she could have them.
This year Brichetto raked the Kroegers’ leaves into a tarp and dragged them back to her own yard. “Joanna got us at the right time because now we will probably do it forever,” said Kroger. “She is welcome in our yard anytime.”
“In my 30 years of dealing with my own leaves, I feel really prepared to tell anybody they can ‘leave the leaves,’ because I’m ready to troubleshoot with them,” said Brichetto.
“I’m stealing, but it’s good for the earth,” she said.
Write to Sarah Nassauer at Sarah.Nassauer@wsj.com
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T he 39-year-old pulled up to a cluster of brown paper bags. Marvin Warren, a fellow leaf thief who lives nearby, was already there. The two stood on the sidewalk answering questions from a confused homeowner, then turned to the task of figuring out who should take home this haul. This would be Schaefer’s day, they decided.
“I’m picky about my leaves,” said Warren, a 42-year-old landscape designer and contractor who uses they as a pronoun and wants extra leaves in their yard for mulch and compost. Warren isn’t a fan of oak leaves that decompose more slowly than some other varieties.
Schaffer was happy to have this take, which she brought home and redistributed in her yard for mulch. “But I also want to save all the critters who live in them,” she said.
W hile most Americans toil every fall to rid their lawns of leaves, raking and blowing them away to be bagged up and sent off, a growing group see them as a valuable resource. Fallen leaves provide winter habitat to butterflies, birds and other species, as well as free fertilizer and moisture retention for trees and plants, say proponents who often use the slogan “leave the leaves” to promote the idea.
Ecologists have championed the concept for years. Traditional American lawns with their mowed grass and leaf-free winter garden beds are a waste of what could be healthy habitat, they say. If lawns were used to grow more plants native to their region, that would create habitat for animals, say some ecologists and landscape experts.
The slogan “leave the leaves” took off online after a 2014 blog post the National Wildlife Federation advocated leaving leaves to create winter habitat for salamanders, insects, box turtles and toads, and as free mulch and fertilizer.
Justin Wheeler pushed the #leavetheleaves hashtag in 2017 as social-media leader for the Xerces Society, a group working to preserve habitat for invertebrates, named after an extinct blue-winged butterfly. “If you plant a thriving pollinator garden in the summer and then, come fall, you sanitize the landscape,” you kill many species you worked all summer to preserve, he said.
The slogan quickly got picked up on social media and in articles, said Wheeler. It also sparked confusion and backlash.
Online, people shot back that leaves could spread plant diseases, harbor ticks and kill mowed grass. Wheeler said it was hard for people to understand that “leave the leaves” might mean using them as mulch in tree and shrub beds, not blanketing grass. Wheeler, who now works for another organization, said he stopped posting online about leaves in his own neighborhood groups due to the backlash.
“Leaves and leaf blowers are the most controversial things you can talk about outside of politics,” he said.
The slogan “sometimes does the idea a disservice because people think it means, leave the leaves on my lawn—that will kill my lawn,” said Pam Ford, a Penn State University Master Gardener, a volunteer group certified by the university to advise gardeners on research-based land-management practices.
“What I would like it to mean is, leaves are valuable,” said Ford, who specializes in pollinator conservation. She advises raking leaves under the trees from which they came or into garden beds to add nutrients and create habitat. Designing leaf-holding areas with neat edges can also help meet neighbors’ expectations for a manicured lawn, she said.
Leaves can harbor ticks and some types of plant disease over the winter, say some scientists and academic researchers.
“Leave the leaves” proponents say gardeners should protect themselves from ticks with clothes, repellent and frequent tick-checks while doing yard work regardless of their leaf choices, and can move leaf piles farther from frequently used yard areas if concerned.