Joanna Bechtold, a longstanding EHS member, shares 10 reasons why you should consider the benefits of leaving the natural debris on garden beds.

1) Use the time you save for pruning, repairing structures, etc.

2) The plant foliage contains nutrients extracted from the soil; cut the plant down and let it decompose and return the nutrients back into the soil to promote this year’s growth.

3) The debris decomposes quickly and feeds the good fungus, bacteria, and bugs in the soil. New growth quickly covers the debris and it is mostly gone by late summer.

4) Give the earthworms something to digest. The digested material aerates and improves the soil structure and is fertilizer to boot. Soil kept bare is dead soil.

5) The debris/mulch acts as a weed deterrent. 

6) It conserves moisture.

7) It keeps the roots cool. Plant roots abhor heat. (Remember that when selecting containers. Black is out! Just put your hand on a black pot in full sun!)

8) It amends the soil structure whether clay or sandy. (My chisel hard clay has become so much more pliable.)

9) Considering all of the above, I urge you not to clean up foliage in the fall either. Dump all the leaves you can get on the beds. They will soon knit together and not blow away.
Above all, this will give your plants much needed winter protection, as nowadays we frequently get intense cold without any snow blanket.

I do not use oak leaves on the beds as they are big and slow to compost. (I cut them with the lawn mower and put them on the acid beds.) Nor do I put maple leaves on ground covers such as phlox sublata unless the leaves have been through the lawn mower. You can also ask tree cutters for some chips to add on top.

For rock gardens, I use stone mulch.

10) In spring, summer, fall, and winter debris on the beds benefits a host of beneficial insects, toads, etc., providing moisture, heat & cold protection, safety from predators, food, and nesting sites.

When I moved to my Etobicoke property, I had limited gardening experience. However, I loved being in nature; I was a camper, canoer, and hiker. I marvelled at the diversity and abundance in nature.

I asked myself: How does nature do it?

And so, for 30 years now, I have piled my beds high while others bag up and put it all by the roadside for pick up.
Yes, I have compost heaps too; but, I find that things compost just as well right on the beds with all the attendant benefits. Bulbs have no problem shoving leaves aside or piercing right through them.
And, no, I have had no problems with nitrogen depletion. And, I do not need to fertilize to get flowers on the roses, clematis, etc. I do sometimes fertilize, if I have time, to get extra flowers. Most years I do not have time. Those of you who have been in my garden have been bowled over by the diversity of plants and riot of colour. So, it works!

Nature is not neat. It is ‘messy'. I know for some of you this is hard to accept. We now talk of ‘Garden Rooms’ and we reverse vacuum them with noisy blowers shattering the sounds of nature.

Do we really want to use artificially coloured mulch, as though we are picking out a paint colour for a room?
What was used to colour the mulch?
Black looks nice, but, how did it get black? And, black heats up the soil instead of keeping it cool. How does the colour affect the thousands of microbes at work in the soil?

We can learn to appreciate natural mulch on beds when we realize the benefits and realize that it is nature at work. It’s all about our frame of mind. We so desperately need to get back in touch with nature for our physical, emotional, spiritual, and psychological health. We so desperately need to support our ecosystem!

Observe how Mother Nature does it.

Leaves are not cleared; goldenrods, grasses, etc. are not cut down.

No one comes along with fertilizers and weed killers. And yet what glory and abundance!

Do we really think we know better?