Lawn Care Archives - Nature Center at Greenburgh

October 29, 2025November 5, 2025 Cathy Ludden Around the Grounds, Lawn Care

How to Do Fall Garden Clean-up

I prefer to do my fall garden clean-up with a good book and a glass of wine. But it works just as well with a nice cup of tea, followed by a nap.

The point is, the less garden work you do at this time of year, the better!

Sure, you can blow or rake fallen leaves off of driveways and patios, and move leaves from lawns to flower beds, shrub borders, and under trees. If you’re a real over-achiever, you can do a final weeding job, and maybe spread some compost around woodland plants. Then wrap up the fall chores by spreading fallen leaves over the soil to keep everything warm and snug over the winter. But you don’t really have to.

Fallen leaves are good for the garden, and a few leaves on the lawn are harmless

There are very good reasons to simply let leaves stay where they fall. And intentionally spreading fallen leaves, especially on plants along streets and driveways where salt application is expected, or where dogs visit to leave pee-mails for friends, adds some valuable protection for plant roots and stems. Fallen leaves are better than any sort of commercial mulch for that purpose because they are free, untainted by chemicals, and they add nutrients to soil and plants. In addition, those fallen leaves are likely hosting beneficial (and adorable) insects like butterflies that you’ll want to have around in the spring, and they protect valuable (and even more adorable) insects like fireflies and ground-nesting native bees.

Mourning Cloak butterflies spend the winter in fallen leaves and emerge in early spring

Bagging leaves is so much work, and so unnecessary. But it does make it easier for those of us who need more of them to cart them away! We routinely swipe bagged leaves from around the neighborhood to mulch around plants in common areas, like traffic islands, for winter protection.

A bag of leaves “borrowed” from a neighbor and put to good use

If you have way too many leaves for your own garden, consider using the excess to expand into parts of your lawn for new beds for shrubs and perennials in the spring. Simply define a section of lawn for a new planting area and pile the excess leaves 3 to 6 inches deep. Put up a simple temporary fence, if you like, to contain the leaves over the winter, and let them sit there until spring. A deep layer of undisturbed leaves will eventually kill the lawn, enabling you to plant directly into the soil the following season. If you still have too many leaves, adding them to a compost pile or bin is a great way to turn them into excellent, and free, fertilizer.

Another chore to skip in the fall is cutting plants back. Native grasses and perennials, in particular, are loaded with nutritious seeds that birds can forage all winter long. Cutting these valuable sources to the ground, while buying commercial seed mixes for birdfeeders, is counter-productive. I have been endlessly entertained watching song sparrows and dark-eyed juncos repeatedly jumping up from the ground to grab seeds from the tops of Switch Grass and Prairie Dropseed. And goldfinches adore the seeds of Coneflowers and Black-eyed Susan. Masses of tall perennials and ornamental grasses left standing also provide essential cover for songbirds hiding from predators and stormy weather.

Perennials left standing can provide food for birds all winter

For many years, suburban gardeners considered “neat and tidy” to be the proper garden aesthetic, but that view is rapidly changing. Modern landscape designers very intentionally include grasses and perennials specifically for “winter interest.” The movement of these plants in the wind, and their muted winter colors and interesting shapes, make their inclusion in contemporary designs essential. Cutting them to the ground destroys that beauty, resulting in a barren landscape all winter. Wait until spring — the best time to cut back grasses and perennials is early spring, just before new growth begins.

Switch grass (*Panicum virgatum*) catches the afternoon sun

So, garden friends, take it easy! Leave the leaves. Don’t put down shredded bark or wood chip mulch. Let plants go to seed. Stop dead-heading and tidying up. Let Nature do its own thing for the plants, insects, and birds we want to have around in the spring.

And it’s a lovely day to take a nap!

July 2, 2025July 31, 2025 Cathy Ludden Around the Grounds, Lawn Care, Native Plants

The All-American Yard

Summertime, and it’s the 4^th of July! American Independence Day!

We love celebrating the Stars & Stripes — flying the flag, draping patriotic bunting on the porch, and decorating everything with red, white, and blue.

But wait! Is your landscape part of the theme? Is it proudly American? Or is it decorated with English Ivy, Norway maple, Chinese silver grass, New Guinea impatiens, Korean dogwood, and Japanese honeysuckle? It’s a shame that so many suburban landscapes today are decidedly…. un-American!

Look around your neighborhood.

Do you see big open lawns extending right up to the house? That’s 19^th Century British style!

In the 1800’s, British aristocracy used cheap manual labor to maintain expansive lawns in a display of wealth and power.

Are there yards in your neighborhood with tightly-clipped evergreen shrubs arranged in rows? That style goes all the way back to 17^th Century France!

French royalty favored shrubs clipped into artificial shapes

Should we really be trying to copy that?

American history is closely tied to wilder, natural landscapes and a vast bounty of beautiful and useful plants. Those plants tell our American story!

For example, if you have an Eastern Red-cedar (Juniperis virginiana) in your yard, you should know that in 1584, English explorers were so awed by the incredible beauty and fragrance of Roanoke Island’s Eastern Red-cedars, they decided to make Roanoke the very first colonial settlement in America.

Many of our best native landscape plants today were critical to the life and survival of early American settlers. They used Witch-hazel (read more here & here), Arborvitae, Bee Ba l m, and hundreds of other plants for medicine. They learned which native plants were good for food and which were useful as building materials. They used native plants to improve their lives — native junipers made good pest repellents, and Bayberry scented their candles and removed odors in their homes.

The common names of many native plants still tell us so much about our past. In New England, colonists relied on the bloom time of Amalanchier shrubs to alert them to the beginning of the shad run as fish started migrating up-river from the sea, so they called the plant “Shadbush.” In other towns, settlers called the same plant “Serviceberry” because its bloom time marked the season when traveling ministers who performed wedding and funeral services could begin using local roads again as the snow melted. Those uses may be gone, but the names still link us to our history.

*Amelanchier*, “Serviceberry” or “Shadbush”

You could show your patriotism on Independence Day by planting a White Pine in your yard. Before the Revolution, the English Crown claimed exclusive use of all American White Pines for the British Royal Navy for ship masts. The Crown’s over-reach triggered the first violent protest by Americans against the British, which likely served as inspiration for the Boston Tea Party. In another practical act of rebellion, colonists started making their own ink and cloth dyes from Pokeweed, an American plant, thereby avoiding British taxes on imports.

Indigenous people introduced colonists to Joe Pye weed as an effective treatment for typhus, and so it was named for a highly-respected indigenous leader. Amsonia or Eastern Blue Star was named for a physician who once treated George Washington, and two early American botanists named their discoveries of indigenous woodland plants, Jeffersonia diphylla and Franklinia alatamaha, after our founding fathers. Both Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were hobby botanists, and when Washington lost interest in European plants, he began collecting and growing native American Redbud trees, among others, for his own estate.

From the first Thanksgiving through the War of Independence, America’s native plants supported settlers and, quite literally, built America. But today, as more Americans have moved to suburban areas, landscapes composed mostly of lawn grass, with a few tightly-clipped, non-native shrubs, have become standard.

The resulting loss of insects, birds, and wildlife is well-documented and tragic. By eliminating pesticides, reducing lawn, and planting native trees, shrubs, grasses, and perennials, homeowners and gardeners can help save and rebuild American biodiversity.

But we can also reclaim American history! Learning about native plants teaches us about our past. The best landscapes give us a sense of place and connect us to what is truly American.

Let’s celebrate the 4^th of July by planting a few great American plants! Many have been featured in this blog over the past several years. Maybe the Goldenrod called ‘Fireworks’ would be appropriate?

So, buy American! Plant American! Go USA!

April 3, 2025April 3, 2025 Cathy Ludden Around the Grounds, Lawn Care

Wait! Hold Off on Your Spring Clean-Up!

A day or two of warm sunshine in early spring makes us all eager to clean up the mess left by winter. We are so ready for spring that we just can’t wait to make our yards neat and tidy.

But wait! Resist the urge! Leave the leaf blower in the garage a little longer. Don’t rake the leaves from under your trees and shrubs. Don’t cut down your ornamental grasses and perennials. And don’t turn over the soil in your flower beds just yet. If you can be a bit more patient, the pay-off is enormous!

A lot of important stuff is happening in your yard in early spring, and you really should let it happen undisturbed.

Beneath all those dead leaves, pine needles, and broken twigs littering our yards, the roots of landscape plants are just waking up. Winter debris actually protects roots and tender new growth, providing essential insulation during the transition from winter to spring. Exposing those roots to unpredictable cold snaps and icy winds is asking for trouble. In addition, leaving soil bare only encourages weeds to develop before landscape plants have a chance to leaf out and shade surrounding soil.

Early spring storms and freezing temps can harm exposed roots

And there are other important things happening under the mess. As the weather gets warmer, butterflies over-wintering in fallen leaves and plant debris begin to emerge. How tragic is it that the prettiest butterflies of early spring are being carted away by lawn crews or left to die in leaf bags at the curb?

Mourning Cloak butterflies survive the winter in brush piles and leaf litter. They emerge early, but only when temperatures are warm enough. Don’t lose them by cleaning up too soon!

Birds that have survived the winter, or arrived after long migrations, are desperately looking for food in the lean stretch between winter berries and summer insects. As weather warms, caterpillars and other insects hatch in leaf litter where birds scratch around to find them. Clearing those leaves away too early means loss of critical food for birds just when they need it most.

In early spring, a White-throated Sparrow hunts insects in leaf litter

Native bees and fireflies also nest over winter where leaf litter covers the top inch or two of soil. Removing the protective leaf cover too soon exposes them to the cold. Turning over the soil too early destroys the nests, causing the death of essential pollinators, as well as summer’s fireflies.

Firefly larvae spend the winter in topsoil protected from freezing by a cover of leaves

So, what is the right time to begin spring clean-up? There is legitimate debate in ecological gardening circles about this topic. One school of thought is to wait until temperatures are regularly in the 50’s, allowing most ground-dwelling insects to emerge. Others note that many species of valuable insects emerge much later in the season, and some insects that nest in the hollow stems of perennials may even need more than one season to complete their life-cycle. Those experts recommend leaving some portion of un-cut or partially cut flower stems standing from season to season, never cutting all of them to the ground. All experts agree that leaving as many fallen leaves, and as much undisturbed soil, as possible — for as long as possible — increases survival rates of insects and birds.

The best approach is to adopt different clean-up strategies for different habitats. If you have a wooded area, let the leaves stay there indefinitely. “The best place for leaves is under the tree they fell from,” according to Dr. Doug Tallamy. And if you can’t wait to blow or rake dead leaves from hardscape and lawn, simply move them to wooded areas and spread them under trees and shrubs to preserve all of their ecological value on your property. If there are just too many leaves to make that possible, find an area where you can pile leaves loosely until it’s time to compost them. And don’t worry about clearing old leaves away from perennials in wooded shade gardens. After all, native shade plants evolved growing in forests. They have no problem emerging through leaf litter when they’re ready.

Early native perennials, like Jacob’s Ladder, happily emerge through the winter leaf cover

If you have sunny areas where you’ve planted flowering perennials and ornamental grasses, always leave them standing over winter. Then, wait longer than you think you should before cutting them back in the spring. If you wait until mean temperatures are regularly at least 50 degrees, the roots of your plants will be protected from late cold snaps and heavy spring rains, and you will be giving songbirds a better chance to grab the last seeds and earliest emerging insects. Leave a few stems of each perennial, especially the hollow stems, cut a foot or two above ground level, for nesting bees at the end of summer. New growth will soon cover the bare cut stems.

Not yet! Wait a little longer to cut everything back.

If you find you have too much plant and leaf debris to keep in existing areas of your yard, don’t send it all away. Consider turning part of your lawn into an expanded planting area in the new season. Mark off a new garden bed, add an edger, and pile the plant debris there to smother lawn and enrich the soil for the trees, shrubs, or native perennials you want to add this summer. By the time you’re ready to plant, you’ll have a good head start preparing the new beds.

So, relax for a few more weeks each spring! Thumb through garden catalogues, scout the local native plant sales, and plan your new yard projects for the summer. If you use a professional landscape crew, save a few bucks and tell them to start later. Their work schedule doesn’t have to determine your garden schedule.

We’re all eager for spring. You’ll know it’s here when you start seeing bumblebees buzzing around and realize you haven’t needed a jacket to go outside for a whole week. That’s when spring clean-up season is finally here!