For years, the standard fall routine was simple: rake every leaf, stuff the pile into bags, and make the lawn look as though autumn never happened. Now gardeners are increasingly told to “leave the leaves,” which sounds wonderfully easy until a thick layer of wet maple leaves is plastered across the grass. The truth is that leaving fall leaves on the lawn can either help your yard or hurt it depending largely on how many leaves you have and what you do with them. University of Minnesota recommends mulching leaves into turf until you can still see about half of the lawn surface, then removing excess leaves for use elsewhere. Instead of choosing between obsessive raking and completely ignoring the yard, there’s a much easier middle ground.
