Before fall 2024, Takoma Park residents who left leaves on garden beds adjoining city streets worried that city collection trucks might vacuum this leaf cover. Now the city has launched a pilot program for residents who want to keep these leaves: signs that declare “I’m a Leaf Saver.”

FONTT member and sign recipient Byrne Kelly welcomes the rollout of the signs. In 2020, when the city was considering the purchase of a new leaf-vacuum truck, he urged council members to consider alternatives.

Byrne, a landscape architect, told the council that the natural process of leaf decomposition supports microbes that benefit trees. He noted that the spongy quality of fallen leaves helps retain soil moisture and reduces urban heat island effects.

In 2022 and 2023, when city workers vacuumed the leaves from a bank at his residence, Byrne prevailed on the public works department to return the leaves to the site since they were needed to reduce erosion. He hopes the signs will prevent similar mix-ups and encourage more city residents to become leaf-savers.

As we noted in last month’s post, awareness is growing that an ecological best practice is to conserve fallen leaves as much as possible on-site. As the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation puts it, “Leaves are habitat, not trash.”

Pollinators and other creatures need leaf cover to overwinter; some insects have laid their eggs for next season on these leaves. Mowing and shredding fallen leaves, while beneficial in providing nutrients to lawns, risks harming insects in one life cycle phase or another.

Post and photos by Meg Voorhes