Leave your leaves-update

One of my first blog posts was when I decided to leave the fallen leaves on the garden rather than sweep them up religiously and dispose of them. I had previously attempted to make leaf mould although it seems to take such a long time to happen. There are two methods, one is to put your leaves into a wire mesh pen and the other is to pop them into a black bag with holes...I did both and neither were particularly successful. So last year I swept up the leaves from the grass paths onto the beds and borders. My thinking was that it would provide some insulation to the plants there and also create habitat for over wintering insects and to this end it worked perfectly well. It wasn't the coldest winter from what I can remember and so it was hard to say whether it would have prevented any plant losses but the biggest flaw in the plan was discovered in late winter. With a reasonable layer of leaves covering the beds it hid all the bulbs and when I did see some shoots pushing their way up and tried to pull back the leaves I ended up not knowing where to stand without damaging the new growth. I didn't want to leave the thick mulch of leaves over the top if the bulb shoots as I didn't want them to rot off and also as well as the insects that enjoyed a winter hideaway so did the slugs and snails, not that I need any more of those slimy munchers.

So as I started to clear the leaves to uncover the new growth as carefully as possible on my hands and knees from the pathways and wondered if I would do the same again the following year or whether I would rake up those bad boys and leave the beds naked...well its October, the leaves are already falling and I'm still not sure especially with 250 more bulbs getting planted in the next few weeks.

What do you think?