There’s one simple thing that will help any critters that live or visit your property this time of year stay healthy during the winter months.

And this simple thing is: “Nothing.” Instead of picking up fallen leaves, leave them alone.

Once upon a time, the ideal lawn was a tight patch of grass; No crabgrass, dandelions or other weeds are allowed. It was mowed regularly and fed with a mixture of fertilizer and herbicide. Autumn leaves were thought to be an ugly mess that only formed heavy mats during the wet winter months, killing the grass beneath them. In the spring, they were collected to be used as mulch, put in bags, sent to landfill or, worst of all, burned. It was expensive to maintain and a lot of work.

As we have learned over the last 60 years of increasing environmental movement, leaf raking has also removed the comforting cover of fallen leaves that protect many creatures that need them to survive our cold, wet winters.

In their 1974 book “Biological Control of Plant Pathogens,” scientists Kenneth Baker and James Cook wrote: “Man must learn to visualize the pathogen in his crops as a partner in the feast, before himself and in the overview.” He is part of the scene like himself and is more likely to have a residence permit. Each organism is the center of its own universe, as much as man believes himself to be.”

This understanding has led to the widespread understanding that biodiversity is the key to a healthy ecology. The more living things there are in the living space, the stronger the fabric of life becomes. This includes all so-called “bad” bugs, rots, and diseased organisms; for these are food for all good men, or support the creation of food.

The old-fashioned “ideal lawn” supported only one major life form: grass. Almost everything that remained was a monocultural desert. So it took a lot of work to maintain. It was not sustainable without major contributions from the owner.

The beauty of a healthy environment is that it can sustain itself when you make it work; just like nature sustains itself in the wild. As Masanobu Fukuoka said in his book “One Straw Revolution,” “The right question for the farmer or gardener is ‘What should I do next?’ It is not. not, ‘What can I stop doing?’”

You can stop raking your leaves.

Leaves contain all the nutrients the plant needs to build its tissue. So when the leaves fall, fungi, molds, and microorganisms in the soil begin to digest them, turning the leaf litter into soluble forms of the same nutrients that the plant will recycle to build next year’s tissue. (This is the same thing your body does when you eat a salad.)

Fallen leaves provide important protection

What happens if you remove the leaves every year? You are removing last year’s nutrients, impoverishing the soil year after year, until eventually the soil is worn out and everything that grows in it is deprived of health and vitality. By allowing leaves to remain where they fall, you give the many of the insects that pollinate, groom and live in our gardens and landscapes a safe, protected and, most importantly, moist place to thrive in the early stages of their development.

Butterflies and moths may begin the winter as eggs but later develop into larvae. The leaves help protect their vulnerable bodies from predators such as birds and mice. But there are usually plenty of pips to spare. A nesting pair of chickadees can feed 4,000 or more caterpillars before their babies are fully developed, and many more before they take their first flight three weeks later. Surviving caterpillars can then pupate and surround themselves in a chrysalis or cocoon; This gives them greater protection as the winter progresses and they prepare to emerge from the safety of leaf litter as adults in the spring.

Insects commonly seen in our gardens are of two main types. One is plant eaters. The other is insectivorous predators that eat plant eaters. If there are mainly plant eaters in your garden, you are in trouble. Without a full supply of predators, plant eaters can proliferate and destroy your crops or ornamentals. Many insects of both species overwinter under leaf litter; so if you remove the leaves, you eliminate both the plant eaters and their predators. So who are the first insects to repopulate the garden? Not predators, because there aren’t many plant eaters to feed on. What about plant eaters? The garden is a well-stocked buffet of edible crops and ornamental plants. There’s plenty of food for the bad guys. So by removing the leaves you create problems for your plants and work for yourself, which can be solved by applying pesticides. But pesticides not only further disrupt the balance of power in your garden, they can also disrupt other ecological systems beyond insects.