Community Voices: Fall is time to give back to nature

NWF Certified Wildlife Habitat: www.nwf.org/How-to-Help/Garden-for-Wildlife/Certify-Your-Wildlife-Garden.aspx

Monarchs Across Georgia: www.eealliance.org/monarchs-across-ga

It is autumn and the leaves are falling, but I’m letting them lie again this year. I’ll rake most onto the flower beds and pine straw island areas, but the leaves will remain. It appears my laissez-faire method of lawn care is cutting edge ecologically, environmentally friendly, and what the National Wildlife Federation recommends.

In fact, letting nature take its course with fall foliage, is to allow conservation to come full circle.

While my sunny and lush-lawned neighbors blow, rake, pile and bag their leaves as garbage, I’m content to keep the crunch beneath my ballet flats and let sleeping leaves stay and provide comfort and cover for the frogs, lizards, turtles and caterpillars that choose my yard as their home.

Our lawn isn’t the standard manicured carpet of green that surrounds most other homes within sight. The additional trees and hedges we’ve planted over the years have grown and matured, and provide shade and seclusion, but prohibit the propagation of grass. As a result, what was once a partially sunny yard, complete with regulation grass to be mowed, is now too shady to grow anything other than moss, ground cover vines and wild strawberries. When the lawn mower died over a dozen years ago there was really no need to replace it. I’ve had no issue with this, nor have the vast assortment of birds, bunnies, chipmunks, squirrels and gliders that frequent our yard.

With no lawn to maintain, there is no need for pesticides or chemical treatments. But even for those with traditional lawns, leaf litter helps suppress weeds, provides yard and garden soil with nutrients, and allows greater water retention.

Pollinators, such as bees and butterflies, are struggling environmentally due to misuse and overuse of pesticides and shrinking habitats. Butterflies and moth caterpillars spend the winter in fallen leaves before emerging in spring, and have specific preferences when it comes time to lay eggs.

Janet Liberman, Roswell’s Environmental Programs Manager, and executive director of Keep Roswell Beautiful, told me that’s why Roswell, an NWF Certified Wildlife Habitat community since 2013, recently planted milkweed, a favored savory of monarch butterflies, at the Roswell Recycling Center.

Liberman also shared that the recycling center will be celebrating America Recycles Day next month by extending document shredding days, adding oil-based paints as an accepted recycling material from residents beginning Nov. 3, holding a Household Hazardous Waste Event Nov. 7, and collecting gently used, clean sheets, towels and blankets for the critters at the Atlanta Humane Society in Alpharetta/Roswell, during November.