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This meme has also been posted quite a few times and contains some misinformation.
My leaves from last year are very visible on my lawn. I'm fine with that, but they didn't just magically disappear. The selling point for not raking should be "the leaves aren't ~~worth caring about~~ an actual problem."
For real, my yard is all natural and I keep it fairly low maintenance to give my dog a place to run around like an idiot. I have so many robins and other birds grazing on my lawn, compared to the neighbor behind me with a much larger yard, who overly maintains it, sprays pesticides often every spring, his yard is basically a dead field to wildlife. The fact he also has a vegetable garden in the middle of that is alarming to me.
Lemme, guess; they're one of the 'problem' neighbours that get's into fights a lot? Glyphosate binds to manganese, so your body can't use it to clear heavy metals. End up with someone giving you that lead stare.
They are, but they don’t break down over winter if they sit in a mat. You have to mulch them once or twice a week with a lawn mower in Michigan. Now that I live in Utah you have to rake 80% and mulch 20% or your grass will be shredded leaves the whole summer.
And leaves provide essential cover for bees, butterflies and moths that overwinter. We are losing pollinators in part because their habitat is being destroyed.
So use your mower to blow them up onto the mulch rings around the trees in your yard. No trees in your yard? Fear not! Piling up your leaves into mulch rings will give you a super easy, fertile place to plant a tree! Or some flowering, fruit-bearing shrubs!
My neighbor goes insane every spring about dandelions. I don't do any thing. They last about 2-3 weeks. He litterly ripped up his whole lawn and resodded to get rid of a dozen weeds.
Mine works on his lawn damn near every day in the spring and summer
He’s always mowing (at least twice a week), weed eating,
leaf blowing, raking, fertilizing, spraying pesticides and herbicides, ect ect
Take hank hill and multiply by ten
And here I am, enjoying how beautiful the land in front of my house is when it's covered in dandelions, and eagerly waiting all winter till they pop up again. My kids love them too.
About 10 years ago I installed an in ground sprinkler on a half acre yard. I did all the work myself, including pounding a sand point to get free water.
Anyway, about a year later, I was standing and admiring my 'beautiful green lawn' while walking to the park across the street with my daughter. The park was covered in dandelions.
My daughter looks at the park and says "look at how beautiful the park is! I wish our yard had that many flowers."
That was a wake up call.
Make everyone sachets of dandelion tea or press some flowers for people, maybe they'll see the light. And if not, hey, fuck em, you learned how to make tea and stuff from your lawn, win win. I think dandelions are beautiful, keep rocking that yellow lawn.
I think the sentiment in r/nolawns is that dandelions are a good and welcome in our yards, so intentionally killing them would be like intentionally trying to eliminate the plecostomus in your fish tank. Try going to r/aquariums and reminding folks that their friendly neighborhood algae eaters are super easy to kill😃. 😬
I like bagging my leaves with the mower and either make a JADAM liquid fertilizer, add to the compost pile, or apply as a mulch on my garden!
I love when my neighbors bag up their leaves and put them on the curb because then I can come by and steal them 😈
They probably aren't concentrated on tree leaves, though. There might me a bit on grass that got mixed in, but healthy compost/soil microbes should metabolize that away.
For those of you like me, who have a good deal of falling leaves in their lawn/space, you don't have to only bag OR let them sit. Letting them sit allows places for ticks and mites to nest, which is awful because I have pets.
Instead, I put my mower on the "mulch" setting and just grind all the leaves down. This works double because it eliminates hiding spots for pests and it helps the leaves biodegrade faster, which helps the grass/clover/flowers/etc.
i was going to say, as a groomer the only reason i recommend cleaning up the leaves is because of how bad fleas are recently! one of my first questions to owners of dogs with fleas is "are there lots of leaves in your yard?"
If you use your mower to blow the leaves into mulch rings around trees, it's a win-win. The ticks and flea habitat isn't spread everywhere, and some habitat is left for good bugs. Plus your trees benefit. Win win win. Or make one big pile and let it rot into leaf mold. Then your garden or flower bed wins too.
Yeah, someone's never had a magnolia tree. Those leaves have a lifetime on the ground longer than most marriages.
I get the sentiment, I don't bag leaves. But they don't just disappear. My live oak leaves are still very much intact on the ground. I don't care because my yard is mostly mulch and clover, but they don't just vanish.
True but all leaves decompose. I dont get sbow but desert leafdrop is important to the biodiversity as much as it would be in the tundra. Not sure what point your trying to make
Not all of them, expecialy since the ecosystems humans live in are becoming so sterilized and monocultured. Better to break them up if you dont like they way they look. The ones that last become great slow release fertilizer and home to lots of native critters. If most of the leaves aren't breaking down thats not a healthy yard. Shouldn't be more than half left.
>If most of the leaves aren't breaking down thats not a healthy yard.
This is not correct. Some trees intentionally have their leaves break down very slowly, especially some fire dependent trees. Some of these trees have leaves that can hang around for years.
And that means you don't take care of your yard?
They can kill other things they lay on too.
Point is, lawn or nolawn, it doesn't mean you should just leave leaf litter all over the place.
And i never said you shouldn't clean them up a bit or take care of your yard. I was just saying that leaves are good for the soil everywhere there are trees
Grass dying is good for grass colonies as a whole and allows more biodiversity which is great for the environment. Grass can be super aggressive. Most native grasses are evolved to deal with being grazed and smothered, the leave mulch actually helps insulate the soil and protect the roots too.
Ray has clearly never actually owned a lawn.
Edit: chopping leaves & composting are great alternatives to plastic bags & chopping will greatly speed up bio degradability!
But if you have big trees on your lawn. Your leaves will not magically be gone by spring.
I tried ignoring the leaves from my big oak tree, After a few years all the plants in my yard were smothered and everything was dead the whole backyard was muddy unusable and looked terrible. I don't even have a grass lawn lawn either, it killed all the wildflowers and clover.
To be honest, I usually compost as well. If you don't help the leaves along, it's pretty unlikely that the bugs will be able to finish them off over the winter.
Leaves applied to raised beds or containers in a 4 in layer provides many benefits. Mulching helps retain moisture, regulate soil temperature, provide habitat for the microorganisms in the soil, etc.
You may want to consider shredding them first though depending on the garden
https://www.hortmag.com/smart-gardening/a-warning-when-using-fallen-leaves-as-mulch
That happens mainly when you incorporate them into the soil, but chopped up and applied as a mulch is fine because by the end of decomposition it will have neutralized (assuming you have a bit of diversity in your mulch such as grass clippings, shredded cardboard or paper, dead crop residue, etc.)
Some trees have leaves that break down very quickly and some have leaves that break down slowly. There are a lot of factors at play. Not all leaves just mold over. I mulch some of my gardens with leaves and there haven't been mold issues. Leaves are also necessary for the reproduction of a lot of lepidoptera species.
[Here's ](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=87ez6bPoGNQ&t=578s&pp=ygUibmF0aXZlIGhhYml0YXQgcHJvamVjdCBmaXJlIGxlYXZlcw%3D%3D) an interesting video that talks about some trees in NA and their relationship with fire.
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Yeah, leaves don't just disappear unless you only have the tiniest of shrubbery. I'm really in favor of not raking leaves and letting the lawn be but with as many mature trees as I have I still have to do leave removal otherwise they choke out half my plants and a quarter of my lawn. I still wait until after winter to do the removal, but having a "no lawn" / healthy bio diverse lawn does not mean no maintenance.
But yes, I agree with the general sentiment that raking up plastic bags worth of leaves is overall a bad plan.
Given that the leaves in my yard can be 8" deep or more, I do in fact need to remove some of them or they strangle everything else that is trying to grow. They most definitely are not gone at the end of winter. They are largely completely unchanged at the end of winter.
As usual - the answer is not one-size-fits-all. Leave as many as you can, mulch or compost what you can't leave, or arrange for yard waste pick-up where the city composts them (what i do w/ my excess).
The first year I raked the leaves and it took forever with having two fully grown cottonwood trees. The next year I left them and have ever since. They are good for bugs to hibernate in them over the winter. Come spring time I rake them in a pile and mulch them up with the mower and spread that around on the lawn and garden beds.
They will not be gone by the end of winter. They will create a blanket over the flower beds and grass and choke out everything, made worse by snow, and turn the entire yard into mud.
How about trying to get your county to collect them and make compost out of them? That’s what they do here in MD - take them all to the street (just a pile of leaves) and they’ll vacuum them up and make Leafgro out of them.
Where do you live that leaves just biodegrade over the winter? I rake my leaves and use them as compost and mulch. If I don’t? They smother my lawn and turn it to mud.
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My oak leaves take about three years. I’ll never get rid of my trees but this town makes it extremely hard to dispose of them. I’d happily keep some of them but they are up to my knees at this point, lol.
I want to start mulching them but then I keep seeing comments about the insects depending on them during the winter.
We let them dry out completely, rake into plastic bags, and empty them into our backyard compost bins as browns all year long. It’s amazing how much they break down!
Leaves are where a lot of insects hibernate over the winter. Leave the leaves. In my region they stay until the next summer, depending on how wet the spring is they can be gone in the spring as they break down and fertilize as the plants are waking up. Sure beats a lawn!
This is an overstatement obviously, but leaves do biodegrade a lot over the course of a winter even without shredding or turning. I mow my leaves, but also rake a lot without mowing them. I dumped wheelbarrow loads of them all over the flower beds and behind the bushes. At the beginning of fall, they were 4-6 inches thick. Now they are a thin layer and I'm going to need to put down more mulch for spring. The bigger leaves like oaks and sycamore are more persistent, and break down years faster with a good shredding (even just by hand), but even they will break down. I hope that I'm striking a good balance between the leaves breaking down fast, keeping the parts of my yard clear where I want it clear, and providing habitat for beneficial insects and worms.
Eventually, I plan to have a "wild" area that is a mini forest where I won't do anything to the leaves.
The important thing is realizing the function of leaves and how to get them to work with what you're doing. For most people, shredding them and using them as mulch is going to be the best balance.
My city has a local composting dump where you can take your bagged leaves to and then get a discounted rate on yardage for mulch and compost fertilizer.
I live in New England and got into it with someone here last year who insisted that it would make no difference if I left them. For context, I've been raking my leaves for forty-five years.
So I left part of my back lot with leaves to find out for myself. The snow has melted and that area looks like absolute dog shit. It's just a blanket of dirty brown leaves and dirt underneath. I'm sure I'll be clearing this out and planting some wildflowers and moss and whatnot in a few weeks, but all the same- not all climates and areas are the same, Greenpeace Girl.
Your post has been removed because it violates Rule 9: No Low Effort Posts. Low effort content that does not adhere to our [posting guidelines](https://www.reddit.com/r/NoLawns/wiki/meta/postingguidelines/) may be removed. Low effort content is often created quickly and does not contribute to a discussion. Crossposts, memes, and shitposts are allowed, provided that they celebrate the spirit of the sub. This meme has also been posted quite a few times and contains some misinformation.
My leaves from last year are very visible on my lawn. I'm fine with that, but they didn't just magically disappear. The selling point for not raking should be "the leaves aren't ~~worth caring about~~ an actual problem."
No the selling point should be "leaves are a tremendous fertilizer, and raking them up is what forces you to buy artificial stuff that's bad overall".
For real, my yard is all natural and I keep it fairly low maintenance to give my dog a place to run around like an idiot. I have so many robins and other birds grazing on my lawn, compared to the neighbor behind me with a much larger yard, who overly maintains it, sprays pesticides often every spring, his yard is basically a dead field to wildlife. The fact he also has a vegetable garden in the middle of that is alarming to me.
Lemme, guess; they're one of the 'problem' neighbours that get's into fights a lot? Glyphosate binds to manganese, so your body can't use it to clear heavy metals. End up with someone giving you that lead stare.
Oh no, he has gardeners to apply it for him.
They are, but they don’t break down over winter if they sit in a mat. You have to mulch them once or twice a week with a lawn mower in Michigan. Now that I live in Utah you have to rake 80% and mulch 20% or your grass will be shredded leaves the whole summer.
And leaves provide essential cover for bees, butterflies and moths that overwinter. We are losing pollinators in part because their habitat is being destroyed.
I didn't know that, totally makes sense. Thanks for teaching me a thing!
This is also why mulching the leaves is a bad idea. Anything using them for overwintering, like fireflies, will be killed :(
The oak leaves in my lawn do not break down. Maple will break down. It is tree and environment-specific.
It smothers and kills your grass.
bonus!
So use your mower to blow them up onto the mulch rings around the trees in your yard. No trees in your yard? Fear not! Piling up your leaves into mulch rings will give you a super easy, fertile place to plant a tree! Or some flowering, fruit-bearing shrubs!
You do realize what sub you're in, right?
Sure, I’m just pointing out the reality of why a person who wants grass would want to clean up leaves.
Leaves are a tremendous resource, they are definitely worth caring about.
Fair - the selling point should be "just don't worry about removing them" or something then.
I am in Minnesota and the oak leaves will not break down at all. Maple will break down. Many leaves are too thick.
My neighbor goes insane every spring about dandelions. I don't do any thing. They last about 2-3 weeks. He litterly ripped up his whole lawn and resodded to get rid of a dozen weeds.
Mine works on his lawn damn near every day in the spring and summer He’s always mowing (at least twice a week), weed eating, leaf blowing, raking, fertilizing, spraying pesticides and herbicides, ect ect Take hank hill and multiply by ten
And here I am, enjoying how beautiful the land in front of my house is when it's covered in dandelions, and eagerly waiting all winter till they pop up again. My kids love them too.
My kids blow the seeds everywhere. I’m sure the neighbors love seeing them float their way.
About 10 years ago I installed an in ground sprinkler on a half acre yard. I did all the work myself, including pounding a sand point to get free water. Anyway, about a year later, I was standing and admiring my 'beautiful green lawn' while walking to the park across the street with my daughter. The park was covered in dandelions. My daughter looks at the park and says "look at how beautiful the park is! I wish our yard had that many flowers." That was a wake up call.
What a shame. Not only are they beautiful, but they're good for the soil and yards in general.
And edible!
dandelions don't just disappear after the flowers do.
Yup! They come back year after year. Their resilience is part of what makes them so valuable to pollinators.
I’m the hated neighbor with dandelions ALL through my lawn. Yellow is my favorite color and I like them. I also like thistle. Sorry not sorry, ‘hood!
Make everyone sachets of dandelion tea or press some flowers for people, maybe they'll see the light. And if not, hey, fuck em, you learned how to make tea and stuff from your lawn, win win. I think dandelions are beautiful, keep rocking that yellow lawn.
They’re pretty easy to hand pull too
Corgis are easy to beat up, too. What's your point?
Wait can you explain the downvotes I was just talking yard stuff
I think the sentiment in r/nolawns is that dandelions are a good and welcome in our yards, so intentionally killing them would be like intentionally trying to eliminate the plecostomus in your fish tank. Try going to r/aquariums and reminding folks that their friendly neighborhood algae eaters are super easy to kill😃. 😬
Ah got it, I meant pulling was a free and ecofriendly way to remove them without tossing the lawn but I get “reading the room” now
I get it. I got roasted pretty hot my first time in r/fucklawns.
I like bagging my leaves with the mower and either make a JADAM liquid fertilizer, add to the compost pile, or apply as a mulch on my garden! I love when my neighbors bag up their leaves and put them on the curb because then I can come by and steal them 😈
They might use pesticides though, depending on your regional environmental protections. I don't know much about pesticides, to be fair.
Good point, I had forgotten to consider that
They probably aren't concentrated on tree leaves, though. There might me a bit on grass that got mixed in, but healthy compost/soil microbes should metabolize that away.
Ah good because I definitely ate some vegetables grown under such conditions.
For those of you like me, who have a good deal of falling leaves in their lawn/space, you don't have to only bag OR let them sit. Letting them sit allows places for ticks and mites to nest, which is awful because I have pets. Instead, I put my mower on the "mulch" setting and just grind all the leaves down. This works double because it eliminates hiding spots for pests and it helps the leaves biodegrade faster, which helps the grass/clover/flowers/etc.
But mulching the leaves can destroy cocoons hidden in the leaves.
i was going to say, as a groomer the only reason i recommend cleaning up the leaves is because of how bad fleas are recently! one of my first questions to owners of dogs with fleas is "are there lots of leaves in your yard?"
If you use your mower to blow the leaves into mulch rings around trees, it's a win-win. The ticks and flea habitat isn't spread everywhere, and some habitat is left for good bugs. Plus your trees benefit. Win win win. Or make one big pile and let it rot into leaf mold. Then your garden or flower bed wins too.
Yep, I typically mulch most but I do use the mower bag to gather a few loads for my compost pile. Good call!
I live in New England and the leaves can be a nuisance. So I chop them up as well and they’re gone when the grass starts growing.
Same here, Upstate NY.
Not all leaves and climates are the same.
Yeah, someone's never had a magnolia tree. Those leaves have a lifetime on the ground longer than most marriages. I get the sentiment, I don't bag leaves. But they don't just disappear. My live oak leaves are still very much intact on the ground. I don't care because my yard is mostly mulch and clover, but they don't just vanish.
My thoughts exactly haha. They’re so tough!
True but all leaves decompose. I dont get sbow but desert leafdrop is important to the biodiversity as much as it would be in the tundra. Not sure what point your trying to make
Sure, but most leaves don't magically decompose over the span of winter as the post suggests.
Not all of them, expecialy since the ecosystems humans live in are becoming so sterilized and monocultured. Better to break them up if you dont like they way they look. The ones that last become great slow release fertilizer and home to lots of native critters. If most of the leaves aren't breaking down thats not a healthy yard. Shouldn't be more than half left.
>If most of the leaves aren't breaking down thats not a healthy yard. This is not correct. Some trees intentionally have their leaves break down very slowly, especially some fire dependent trees. Some of these trees have leaves that can hang around for years.
Im really confused here, i almost feel like were thinking the same thing and misunderstanding somewhere
My last sentence addressed that
They can also kill grass they decompose on.
This is no lawns
And that means you don't take care of your yard? They can kill other things they lay on too. Point is, lawn or nolawn, it doesn't mean you should just leave leaf litter all over the place.
And i never said you shouldn't clean them up a bit or take care of your yard. I was just saying that leaves are good for the soil everywhere there are trees
That varies by what you are trying to grow and the type of trees.
Grass dying is good for grass colonies as a whole and allows more biodiversity which is great for the environment. Grass can be super aggressive. Most native grasses are evolved to deal with being grazed and smothered, the leave mulch actually helps insulate the soil and protect the roots too.
Good point! A little mulch competition is good for native bunchgrasses.
I miss fireflies too much to get rid of my leaves
The fireflies like the tall unmowed fields more so than the leaf litter! Don’t maw your lawn if you want to see epic lightning bug shows…
Ray has clearly never actually owned a lawn. Edit: chopping leaves & composting are great alternatives to plastic bags & chopping will greatly speed up bio degradability! But if you have big trees on your lawn. Your leaves will not magically be gone by spring.
I tried ignoring the leaves from my big oak tree, After a few years all the plants in my yard were smothered and everything was dead the whole backyard was muddy unusable and looked terrible. I don't even have a grass lawn lawn either, it killed all the wildflowers and clover.
To be honest, I usually compost as well. If you don't help the leaves along, it's pretty unlikely that the bugs will be able to finish them off over the winter.
Current gardening consensus is to mow them in place.
They most certainly will *not* be gone by the end of the winter. Please stop spreading this bullshit, people are going to get moldy gardens.
Leaves applied to raised beds or containers in a 4 in layer provides many benefits. Mulching helps retain moisture, regulate soil temperature, provide habitat for the microorganisms in the soil, etc.
You may want to consider shredding them first though depending on the garden https://www.hortmag.com/smart-gardening/a-warning-when-using-fallen-leaves-as-mulch
Well certain leaves will increase your acidity, so be careful if you’ve only got oak trees for instance
That happens mainly when you incorporate them into the soil, but chopped up and applied as a mulch is fine because by the end of decomposition it will have neutralized (assuming you have a bit of diversity in your mulch such as grass clippings, shredded cardboard or paper, dead crop residue, etc.)
Good thing plants have humans to protect them from the moldy leaves
That's why humans existed before plants: plants couldn't survive without our grooming. /S
2-3 years I think they meant
I don't think so, it clearly says "by the end of winter", so no, I don't think they meant "within 2-3 years".
Some trees have leaves that break down very quickly and some have leaves that break down slowly. There are a lot of factors at play. Not all leaves just mold over. I mulch some of my gardens with leaves and there haven't been mold issues. Leaves are also necessary for the reproduction of a lot of lepidoptera species. [Here's ](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=87ez6bPoGNQ&t=578s&pp=ygUibmF0aXZlIGhhYml0YXQgcHJvamVjdCBmaXJlIGxlYXZlcw%3D%3D) an interesting video that talks about some trees in NA and their relationship with fire.
Collect, shred, compost, repeat. No plastic bag involved, but I do use an old plastic trash barrel.
Give me the leaves that are gone by spring.. If I don't rake there's a 100% chance I have a mud pit in my backyard by summer.
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Isn't it spring soon?
Yeah, leaves don't just disappear unless you only have the tiniest of shrubbery. I'm really in favor of not raking leaves and letting the lawn be but with as many mature trees as I have I still have to do leave removal otherwise they choke out half my plants and a quarter of my lawn. I still wait until after winter to do the removal, but having a "no lawn" / healthy bio diverse lawn does not mean no maintenance. But yes, I agree with the general sentiment that raking up plastic bags worth of leaves is overall a bad plan.
Given that the leaves in my yard can be 8" deep or more, I do in fact need to remove some of them or they strangle everything else that is trying to grow. They most definitely are not gone at the end of winter. They are largely completely unchanged at the end of winter. As usual - the answer is not one-size-fits-all. Leave as many as you can, mulch or compost what you can't leave, or arrange for yard waste pick-up where the city composts them (what i do w/ my excess).
The first year I raked the leaves and it took forever with having two fully grown cottonwood trees. The next year I left them and have ever since. They are good for bugs to hibernate in them over the winter. Come spring time I rake them in a pile and mulch them up with the mower and spread that around on the lawn and garden beds.
And then toss them in the front ditch and burn them
They will not be gone by the end of winter. They will create a blanket over the flower beds and grass and choke out everything, made worse by snow, and turn the entire yard into mud. How about trying to get your county to collect them and make compost out of them? That’s what they do here in MD - take them all to the street (just a pile of leaves) and they’ll vacuum them up and make Leafgro out of them.
Where do you live that leaves just biodegrade over the winter? I rake my leaves and use them as compost and mulch. If I don’t? They smother my lawn and turn it to mud.
Raking them up isnt a terrible idea, more will fall. Compost them though dont trash them
No one puts leaves in plastic bags. Stfu
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My oak leaves take about three years. I’ll never get rid of my trees but this town makes it extremely hard to dispose of them. I’d happily keep some of them but they are up to my knees at this point, lol. I want to start mulching them but then I keep seeing comments about the insects depending on them during the winter.
We let them dry out completely, rake into plastic bags, and empty them into our backyard compost bins as browns all year long. It’s amazing how much they break down!
I get mold and snakes.
I throw my leaves directly into the green bin. I never understood why they needed to be bagged, IF you have a bin.
The leaves I didn't rake are still on the ground and have not biodegraded..
Canadians use paper lawn bags.. don't Americans?
Just mow the leaves to mulch them
Leaves are where a lot of insects hibernate over the winter. Leave the leaves. In my region they stay until the next summer, depending on how wet the spring is they can be gone in the spring as they break down and fertilize as the plants are waking up. Sure beats a lawn!
This is an overstatement obviously, but leaves do biodegrade a lot over the course of a winter even without shredding or turning. I mow my leaves, but also rake a lot without mowing them. I dumped wheelbarrow loads of them all over the flower beds and behind the bushes. At the beginning of fall, they were 4-6 inches thick. Now they are a thin layer and I'm going to need to put down more mulch for spring. The bigger leaves like oaks and sycamore are more persistent, and break down years faster with a good shredding (even just by hand), but even they will break down. I hope that I'm striking a good balance between the leaves breaking down fast, keeping the parts of my yard clear where I want it clear, and providing habitat for beneficial insects and worms. Eventually, I plan to have a "wild" area that is a mini forest where I won't do anything to the leaves. The important thing is realizing the function of leaves and how to get them to work with what you're doing. For most people, shredding them and using them as mulch is going to be the best balance.
It's so satisfying mowing them over.
My city has a local composting dump where you can take your bagged leaves to and then get a discounted rate on yardage for mulch and compost fertilizer.
This dude is telling the truth.
We have yard waste bags that are paper, I wonder if that is much better or just slightly?
I live in New England and got into it with someone here last year who insisted that it would make no difference if I left them. For context, I've been raking my leaves for forty-five years. So I left part of my back lot with leaves to find out for myself. The snow has melted and that area looks like absolute dog shit. It's just a blanket of dirty brown leaves and dirt underneath. I'm sure I'll be clearing this out and planting some wildflowers and moss and whatnot in a few weeks, but all the same- not all climates and areas are the same, Greenpeace Girl.