Creation Care | Messy Aspects of Gods Creation in the Fall

Enjoy the messy aspects of God’s creation in the fall and protect biodiversity

While there is satisfaction in cleaning up the yard and garden in the fall, many of God’s creatures would prefer that we left things a bit messier.

Let your perennials stand till spring—the seedheads provide invaluable food for winter birds as do the insect larvae overwintering in hollow stems.

Leave the leaves where you can or rake them to the garden beds or mulch them with a mower to nourish your lawn. They provide places for bugs and birds to forage for food as well as habitat for small critters like salamanders, toads, worms and snails.

If you have the space, build a brush pile of fallen branches—it will shelter birds and other creatures in bad weather and decompose over time. Plan to add your Christmas tree.

Avoid weed and feed mixture mania and fertilize your lawn with mulched leaf litter. Chemical fertilizing, killing weeds, watering, and mowing our lawns, and bagging grass clippings is expensive, time consuming and negatively impacts our air and water quality and local habitat. Consider more garden beds of native plants and grasses—fall is a great time to plant! Native plants support local birds, pollinators, and food webs.