Do you rake all the leaves from your garden?

[JofraArchersFastestBall]

I've recently moved from a house in a town centre, with a small garden and student neighbours, to a house in a suburb where people take a bit more care of their gardens etc.

My next door neighbour rakes the fallen leaves from his lawn and driveway. It takes him about 30 mins every couple of days. It does look better than my garden... but i don't really want to do it!

So. Is this something you do, and I'm a scruff if I don't bother? Or can I safely sit in my house and ignore the leaves, assuming they'll disappear eventually?

Yes, especially off the lawn. I have been doing this for about five years and now have several bags of the most wonderful leaf mould.

I do have a big garden though with a convenient hiding place to dump leave the bags to mulch down.

@KaptainKaveman

We do, and take considerable delight in chucking them back next door from whence they came.

Darn those neighbours for having leaf-shedding trees that are helping the climate and the eco system

My neighbours never tidy up their leaves from their tree at the front of their house. Leaves me (pun not intended!) feeling grumpy when I’m moving all their leaves from my drive into my brown bin.

We have a gardener here once a week and the first job he does is use a leaf blower to put it all in a pile then they go in the compost bins. We sometimes clear other areas in between of they get out of hand, eg any that land on the lawn.

Well, thanks to you lot I have swept my patio and raked the lawn. Not an enjoyable job as my baby has just started walking and is determined to help. A stressful thing in a garden with steps. But it does look much better!

But have you put them to one side for leaf mould? 😁

We just run the lawnmower over them so you can't really see them. Probably why our garden is mostly moss but not fussed about that either, means we don't have to cut the grass so often in the summer :D

I do this but we have a lot of leaves that fall. I do it once in the middle of autumn and then at the end. I don't do it regularly!

@FuzzyPuffling Yes! (My only option really, as we don't have a garden waste bin!)

We have three Virginia creepers on the walls and various other trees so there is an abundance of leaves. I pile them up and spread them over the beds to make cosy oversized Teri g places for insects. The hedges keep them quite crisp and they look pretty too.

...overwintering places for insects...

I have this stress every year that I won't be able to get them all swept and binned before the last green bin collection of the year (they don't collect Dec-Mar). I leave some on the beds, but collect up the rest. Dh jumps up and down inside the bin to compress them, so we can cram in as many as possible.

I also get unreasonably angry about the front garden in our cul-de-sac, whereby everyone else's leaves end up in our garden, due to a sort of whirlwind/eddy effect. Neighbour across the road admitted (laughing) that she waits for this to happen every year so she doesn't have to bother and then my immediate next-door neighbour will end up doing it. Except it's not her who does it, it's me!

All those with the neighbour's leaves, be glad! You will have the most beautiful garden ever with all that soil improver! They'll be jealous!

Further down the street the pavement gets covered in autumn leaves, which then become ground in and treacherously slippery. If my front garden was affected by the same, I'd need to clear them off the path at the very least.

I clear the lawn/ drive and pull the excess off the fronts of the flowerbeds so bedding isn't damaged. Happy to have them boosting the compost bins and backs of the borders. I get plenty of stray Oak leaves trapped in my frontage from the woods 200m away!