How to use leaves and green cuttings in your garden

Practical tools for garden maintenance

• Hedge trimmers: Whether as a fence replacement or for decorative purposes – to keep your hedges luscious and healthy, they should be cut back once or twice a year. Depending on the hedge, leaves and branches are produced as a waste product.
• Grass and shrub trimmers: The 2-in-1 devices are not only used to trim tight spaces, corners and edges of the lawn, but are also used to shape up shrubs and bushes thanks to the shrub trimmer blades. Thin branches and grass should be recycled or disposed of.
• Chainsaws and pruning saws: Whether cutting down trees or sawing off individual branches, the wood residue that accumulates during tree maintenance can often be put to use as firewood.
• Scarifiers: So that the grass roots get enough important nutrients, water and air to grow healthily, it is advisable to scarify the lawn at least once a year. In the process, turf felt, dead grass residue and moss are removed and are produced as waste product.
• Lawn mowers: The classic among garden tools, which should not be missing in any household with green space. When regularly mowed, the lawn grows back healthy. The remaining lawn cuttings therefore accumulate repeatedly in spring, summer and autumn.

Produce your own mulch

Mulch, or special types of mulch such as bark mulch, are usually available in any garden centre and in most DIY stores. But did you know that you can make mulch yourself? A mulch layer not only serves as frost protection for plants in winter, it also ensures that moisture is better stored in the soil, weed growth is reduced and it serves as a natural fertiliser after rotting.

For example, you can use dry, chopped leaves, straw and dried lawn cuttings as a mulch for beds. By the way, if you use an Einhell leaf vacuum to collect autumn leaves, you save yourself shredding work, because the leaves sucked up are shredded by the integrated shredder before the remains make their way into the collection sack. If you want to use your shrub and hedge cuttings, you can convert the cut remnants into wood chippings. All you need is a powerful garden shredder, whether a blade shredder or roller shredder is up to you. The chopped cut material can be used as a permanent mulch under shrubs, hedges and other trees.

Winter shelter and protection for native wildlife

Hedgehogs, insects, birds, etc. – in winter a lot of native wildlife looks for a warm and safe shelter. With just a few simple steps, you can make a big contribution and let a few animal roommates spend the winter in your garden.

For example, you can gather the autumn leaves with a leaf blower and accumulate them in a corner protected from wind and rain. In this pile of foliage, hedgehogs can find the perfect refuge to spend their hibernation. You can also save on disposing of your shrub and hedge cuttings if you use the branches instead to build a deadwood hedge. Depending on how long the hedge is to be, wooden posts are beaten into the ground or – even easier – dug with the help of our cordless earth auger. The space between the posts is filled with trunks, branches and the cuttings from hedges, shrubs and bushes. Incidentally, you can also add the remaining leaves and grass residues as the last layer on top of the deadwood hedge. This deadwood or Benjes hedge becomes the perfect habitat for many insects, mammals such as hedgehogs or dormice, reptiles, wild bees and native bird species.