The Best Time to Start Cleaning Up Falling Leaves

After such a long and hot summer, leaves scattered across the lawn are a welcome sign that fall is finally making its arrival. But with so much contradictory advice about fallen leaves, it can be confusing to know whether you should clear them away or leave them for wildlife.

The truth is, it’s a bit of a balance to strike. Removing fallen leaves is important if they’re making paths slippery, smothering grass, or blocking gutters, but piles of leaves also provide invaluable shelter for overwintering insects and mammals, overall supporting your garden’s biodiversity. In the case of removing them, it is beneficial to do so in September – waiting until the weather is much wetter and frosty can become hazardous and tricky.

It’s also a good time to start collecting leaves (add these hand leaf scoops from Walmart to your fall gardening tools) to create leaf mulch for frost protection. Here, we talk through exactly when to start cleaning up falling leaves and where in the yard you should leave them alone.

The Risk of Not Removing Fallen Leaves

There are lots of reasons why September is a good time to start clearing up falling leaves.

While there are still dry spells and temperatures are milder, it’s much easier to collect leaves and remove them than when the frost and ice arrive. Allowing leaves to accumulate into bigger piles this month will only become harder to deal with later on.

One particular area to focus on clearing in September are garden paths that may become hazardous when wet or icy. You can use a cordless leaf blower (like this from Lowe’s) to quickly move leaves out of the way daily.

You should also watch out for leaves piling up on your lawn. In my own yard, a neighbor’s large tree overhangs and drops leaves into a big pile. Once when I forgot to remove them, it ended up killing the grass beneath and caused an unsightly brown patch.

You may find a leaf rake (like this from Walmart) is the best for this, though a larger area of lawn will be easier to clear by using something like this Gardena push leaf collector on Amazon.

You also want to remove any dense piles of leaves in the garden that may trap moisture in the rain, leading to fungal problems like powdery mildew. Take care not to put these in your compost bin and rather dispose of them to prevent diseases spreading.

Elsewhere, look to clear leaves from your gutters. You don’t want debris to cause a blockage, water overflow, and costly damage to your home. You can use this gutter rake from Amazon.

Of course, the other benefit of starting to clear up falling leaves in September is that you can collect them into a garden waste bag (a collapsible gardening tool essential, like this collapsible garden bag from Lowe’s) to turn into leaf mulch. By the time it comes to protecting plants from frost, you’ll have free mulch to work with.

When to Leave Them Alone

autumn leaves in a pile with a tree and shrubs in the background

There is also a reason not to over-tidy your yard in fall, including leaving some fallen leaves for wildlife.

In particular, it can provide shelter for a wide range of overwintering beneficial insects and small mammals where other plans fade and coverage becomes more sparse during late summer and early fall.

Not only this, but as leaves break down they put nutrients back into the soil and can help keep weeds at bay in your flower beds.

Of course, this doesn’t mean you have to keep leaves strewn all over the yard. Consider moving some leaf piles into a designated area of the yard and be selective about what you clear.

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