Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade. The only plants that we ship are snowdrops and miniature hostas. For catalogues and announcements of events, please send your full name, location, and phone number (for back up use only) to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com. Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.
Yes, the sky is really this blue and the trees are really this red during fall in the northeastern US.
Fall in Pennsylvania (mid-Atlantic US) is a big picture time of year. For a good two months, everywhere you go there are gorgeous vistas like the one above as the leaves change color before dropping. The show is long-lasting because the leaves turn at different times, starting in my garden with the American hornbeam’s golden yellow hue, progressing through the bright red tones of maples and native dogwoods, and ending with the burgundy and orange of hydrangeas and viburnums.
The soil is deep and very fertile in my area, allowing trees to grow to gigantic size. And after the color show, the leaves fall and create what I consider my most precious garden resource. Those leaves are what nature supplies for free to protect and improve the soil year after year. That is why it is so disturbing to see many area residents collecting their leaves and putting them by the side of the road to be removed by their municipality.
Here at Carolyn’s Shade Gardens we use every leaf that falls to improve our soil either by leaving them in the beds or by grinding them and using them as mulch. A detailed description of our methods can be found in Shade Gardening in Fall: Fall Clean-up. In addition, up to 18″ of leaves can be ground up and left on the lawn with beneficial results as described in Shade Gardening in Fall: Leaves on the Lawn. There is a video by the Scott Lawn Care Company in the second post to show to your doubting spouse.
In early October, about 35 Carolyn’s Shade Gardens customers attended two Low Maintenance Gardening Seminars given by my husband Michael during which he demonstrated how to grind leaves for mulch. For the benefit of my far flung readers and in the hope of converting more gardeners to this practice, I thought I would show you step-by-step photographs of the process. Michael is the reluctant star of the do-it-yourself guide below.
Step One: Gather the leaves from an area where they can’t be left to decompose on their own. Michael is removing leaves from the pine needle paths on our back hill using a tarp. All leaves in the beds will remain in place as mulch and eventually compost.
Step Two: Take the leaves to a level area like your lawn or driveway. Our driveway is closest to the back hill so Michael took the leaves there for grinding.
As you can see in the photo, we use a standard lawnmower to grind our leaves. We recommend wearing steel-toed footwear, ear protection (see photo below), and, if appropriate, eye protection when using a lawnmower.
Step Three: Grind the leaves to the required consistency. Michael usually goes over them twice, but you can make them as fine or as coarse as you want.
A large amount of leaves becomes a manageable pile after grinding.
Step Four: Gather your free mulch into a container for easy transportation and application. Michael is using a township recycling barrel.
Step Five: Spread the mulch in your garden. Here Michael uses it around the base of newly planted viburnums.
I hope I have made this process look as easy as it really is. Once you try it and see the beneficial results for your soil, you too will be a convert.
Carolyn
Nursery Happenings: Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is done for the fall. Thanks for a great year. See you in spring 2013.
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