Banish the leaf blower and hide the rake this winter!

It starts with a meadow.

You might have heard the buzz about meadow lawns. This is when you intentionally stop mowing all or parts of your lawn to allow wildflowers and other grasses to take root and improve the biodiversity of your garden. Less work for you, less resources wasted in terms of fuel for your mower and ultimately more space for the bees and bugs to life their best lives.

When life gives you leaves, make mulch!

Trees and shrubs lose leaves seasonally. It’s nothing new. Certain trees drop leaves like Taylor Swift drops albums and it’s our privilege to make the most of it.

Raking, and clearing up leaves from your lawn is a purely aesthetic action.

We don’t know when it happened, but some bored gardener decided that leaves were a no-no and suddenly an entire industry of rakes, brooms, leaf-bags, bonfires, wheelbarrows, and leaf blowers was born.

We were sold white picket fence and emerald green lawn dreams and for some reason none of us questioned this. Clearing your garden of leaves has now become a must – a thing we spend time and money on.

But what if we don’t?

What if we rebel? What would happen if we decided to simply stop, and leave the leaves? Would the world end?

We have done our research, and it has been scientifically proven that leaves left on lawns will not:

• Cause the collapse of the global financial system.
• Invoke the wrath of inter-dimensional alien overlords.
• Cause wild meerkats to move into your garden and colonize your rosebushes.
• Cause your television to spontaneously combust.

In fact, leaves left on laws will:

• Blow around a bit
• Shield your lawn from winter frosts.
• Turn into natural mulch and create a lovely habitat for all kinds of beneficial lawn bugs and critters.

In fact, leaving leaves will definitely benefit your lawn, create added biodiversity and save the planet one unused black plastic bag, trip to the landfill and bonfire at a time.

Say it with us now: Let’s! Leave! The! Leaves!

While we are at it, let’s banish the leafblower.

What about those monstrous machines we like to use when raking alone isn’t destructive enough.

Leaf blowers were invented in Japan in the 1940’s as a chemical fogger/spray/mister and only came to the rest of the world as a garden cleanup tool later.

“Leaf blowers were originally introduced in California. By 1990, annual sales were over 800,000 in the U.S., and the tool had become a ubiquitous gardening implement.”

Leaf blowers don’t only do nothing but solve a problem that shouldn’t exist in the first place, they also create a lot of noise (and air) pollution.

Due to this, there is a growing movement to ban leaf blowers altogether.

“The sound level for the person holding a leaf blower exceeds 100 decibels, and those levels exceed World Health Organization outdoor daytime standards of 55 decibels for up to 800 feet (in many neighbourhoods, that’s more than two blocks away)”

They are bad for the environment.

A leaf blower usually has a two-stroke engine that is much less fuel efficient than for example a four-stroke engine. This means the environmental impact of petrol-powered landscaping tools are even worse (per liter of fuel) than your average car.

They are even worse for the operators.

Leaf blowers also cause permanent hearing loss if they are not operated with the necessary safety equipment.

Finally, and most importantly, leaf blowers can cause serious injury to who-ever is operating it, because of large objects being hurled at them by irate neighbours who just want a lazy, undisturbed autumn afternoon.

Let them lie where they fall.

In short – leave the leaves, let them mulch. Don’t waste your time on trips to the landfill, your energy on raking and your sanity on leaf-blowing.

Rather grab a book, find a patch of late autumn sunshine and try out this mulled wine recipe to celebrate the falling of the leaves and the changing seasons