DOBBS FERRY, N.Y. – They have been burned, blown into piles, raked into bags and generally scorned by homeowners everywhere. Fall leaves – so pretty on the trees, such a nuisance when they hit the ground – have long been a thing to be discarded. But now some suburban towns are asking residents to do something radical: Leave the leaves alone.
In the past few years, lawn signs have sprouted in this Hudson River village and across Westchester County, proclaiming the benefits of mulching the leaves in place, rather than raking them up and taking them away. The technique involves mowing the leaves with special mulching blades, which shred them into tiny bits. That allows them to decompose and naturally feed lawns and shrubs.
Officials are encouraging the practice for its cost savings: Westchester spends $3.5 million a year on private contractors who haul away leaves in tractor-trailers and bring them to commercial composting sites in places such as Orange County, N.Y., and Connecticut. At the same time, environmental groups and horticulturalists are praising the practice’s sustainability, devising slogans like “Leave Leaves Alone” and “Love ’Em and Leave ’Em.”
Karen Engelmann, a novelist in Dobbs Ferry, used to rake up the leaves on her half-acre property, which is laced with old oak trees. She once had 120 bags of leaves lined up at her curb to be taken away by the village.
“I wondered, ‘Where do these go?’” she said. “I thought it was odd that there wasn’t an alternative, that there wasn’t someone saying you might want to think about how the planet functions.”
It turned out that her landscaper, Tim Downey, had started experimenting with the new technique. On an unseasonably warm afternoon last week, he navigated his mulching mower over a thick pile of leaves, producing a fine layer of confetti. Downey said the mulched leaves improve the soil’s water retention and provide critical nutrients, reducing the need for fertilizer in the spring.
“It’s utterly insane to be driving tractor-trailers 90 miles away,” said Downey, owner of Aesthetic Landscape Care in Hastings-on-Hudson. “My feeling is that if I’m taking away your leaves, I’m stealing from your property.”
Indeed, commercial firms use fall leaves as a raw material to produce mulch and compost for sale to nurseries. But towns and counties pay to get rid of them.
