Why you don't need to bother raking up dead leaves from your lawn

IT IS late autumn where I live in London – a time of year that sees millions of gardeners like me, across the northern hemisphere, donning their thickest jumpers and spending hours raking giant piles of leaves into plastic bags at the end of driveways. In the US alone, nearly 10 million tonnes of garden waste go to landfill every year. That is a phenomenal amount of effort, not just from an environmental perspective but frankly from that of our creaking backs, too. So wouldn’t it be great if there was an alternative?

Strangely, despite it being one of the most…