By Kathryn Stocks
This month, many of you will feel a strong urge to get out and “tidy up” your gardens. I know some people have already done it, but if you haven’t, please resist the urge. Dead leaves and stems are not litter, they have an important role to play in our ecosystem.
The birds, squirrels and chipmunks use the stems and dead leaves for building their nests. About 70 percent of our native bees lay their eggs in tunnels in the ground and are protected by layers of leaves. The other 30 percent lay their eggs in hollow stems. If you leave the dead stems and leaves where they are, the bees will be able to emerge safely in the spring. But if you put everything into yard waste bags, we’ll never see them.
The leaves that come down in the fall provide winter shelter for butterflies and moths as well, so it’s best if they remain on the ground all winter. Some of those that need the protection of fallen leaves include:
Mated bumblebee queens: They burrow into the soil in the fall and are protected by layers of leaf litter.
Mourning cloak, comma and question mark butterflies: These ones overwinter as adults under leaf litter.
Viceroy and Fritillary butterflies: Their caterpillars hibernate in leaves and emerge during the next breeding season.
Swallowtail butterflies: Theyoverwinter as chrysalises in leaf litter.
To give all these wonderful creatures a chance to live, we recommend leaving your leaves on your lawns or raking them into your gardens in the fall, which is not only good for the insects but the leaves also become free compost for your grass and plants later on.
It’s also important to leave your dead plant stems intact all winter and well into the spring. They provide seeds for the birds to eat and places for bees to lay their eggs. As the weather warms this month, you can cut some of those stems down to between eight and 12 inches tall to create places for bees to lay their eggs this fall. When the plants grow, they will hide the dead stems and you won’t notice them. You can cut the rest of the dead stems and lie them down in your garden. That way if an insect has overwintered, it still has a chance to come out.
Dead stems and leaves have an important role to play in the natural world and you can do your part by just leaving them the way they are naturally.