How to Make a Leaf Fence

David Epstein: Hi, I’m David Epstein. This is Growing Wisdom and fall is the time of the year that the leaves are falling and you might think it’s a pain to rake them up. What do you do with them all? We’re going to talk with Scott Lafleur, Garden in the Woods’ botanic garden director and give you that answer. Scott, you are saving leaves. Scott Lafleur: We do. We save a lot of leaves here in at Garden in the Woods. We use them for malt, we shred them up and save them all season. We used them for our compost pile and we like to think really fun things to do with them and that is making a composting or living fence for them. David Epstein: So Scott, you said a living fence. Tell me about what this is. Scott Lafleur: What this is, is simple taking them off the shelf fencing, you get hardware or whatever. Cut it into rounds and then you start to fill them with leaves and essentially what you’re making is little composting bin. So, at the end of the season, you could actually go knock this over, you’d have lots of good compost coming out of that. You could also use it as a privacy fence and then the other thing we do is we actually plant it so you can actually make like a living wall out of it. David Epstein: You can actually stick plants right in there. Scott Lafleur: You can actually stick plants right in there, absolutely! David Epstein: And would you have to water them or? Scott Lafleur: You do. It’s considered that at that point it’s actually a plant, so you would actually have to water it and make sure that you keep it alive like when you do in the other garden. David Epstein: How long will the leaves take to decompose in a bin like this? Scott Lafleur: They’ll be compose in a season, if you actually fill this up in the spring time or in the fall, it will actually start to lower itself down as a decomposers. So, if you want to use this as actual fence, you are going to need to have a little supply of leaves after the side, just want to keep refilling it. David Epstein: Any other suggestions for them? Scott Lafleur: Well, the other suggestion I do with my daughter Lily is make a fort out of them. So, if you keep building this rounds and you keep adding them around and around and filling them up with leaves, you can actually create a little fort them to go inside. David Epstein: Well that’s fun. Scott Lafleur: Oh, yeah we have a lot of fun in—with this. David Epstein: Well Scott, you’re all about conservation here at the Garden in the Woods and this is a great way to conserve one of nature’s most abundant resources. Scott once again, thanks for you time. And thanks for watching this edition of Growing Wisdom, come back every week for all of our tips, hints and helps.