Fallen Leaves

[RobinP]

Isn't it usually about the first week in December when they've finally all dropped? I'm going to wait until then before I do any collection/clean up.

[smartie]

It also may depend on how many leaves you get. The front of my house seems to be a natural leaf trap and attracts large drifts of them. If I didn't sweep them up I couldn't get into the garage. I've collected 8 large bin bags full, which will make great leaf mould in a couple of years. When we used the stuff from the last set of bags we found a hedgehog tucked up in one of them with a worm picnic.

Like others, I also put leaf piles in the shrubbery and I've filled the hanging baskets we use for tomatoes in the summer with a mixture of leaves and composted wood chippings from some tree pruning which the resident garden tits and robin like to hunt about in for invertebrates.

[Susie]

We've had less than half the leaves fall from the oaks so far. I don't expect ours will all be down until Christmas.

[annes]

Mine, still not falling all the leaves. I’ll wait until they finally all dropped then that’s the time I will have my clean up duty. =)
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[gillwrig]

I collect them up for my hedgehogs ... have to put them in dryer first though otherwise they are a bit wet.

Lord knows what they doing with them all though.

[Dalesman]

I started clearing the leaves in my back garden last month and when a frog appeared I cancelled the cleaning up and left a mound of leaves in a corner behind the shed for it to settle down in.
I don’t have a pond but part of the garden is damp and the surrounding area is boggy with springs popping up all over the place. As I have had single frogs in the garden on numerous occasions I was wondering if it could possibly be the same one. Could anyone tell me if they are territorial creatures.

[Cotham Marble]

Originally Posted by Dalesman

I started clearing the leaves in my back garden last month and when a frog appeared I cancelled the cleaning up and left a mound of leaves in a corner behind the shed for it to settle down in.
I don’t have a pond but part of the garden is damp and the surrounding area is boggy with springs popping up all over the place. As I have had single frogs in the garden on numerous occasions I was wondering if it could possibly be the same one. Could anyone tell me if they are territorial creatures.

The UK Common Frog can often be found in small groups where ever there is appropriate habit and refuges - so to that extent there's no obvious territorial competition. However froglets are in danger of being eaten by adults so there may be a degree of 'size sorting' that goes in the grouping process with the smaller frogs keeping away from the larger ones where that is possible.

Competition for food is likely to cause a local population to spread outward - if there's lots of food close by a 'home (breeding) pond' the population density around the pond will likely stay high throughout the year, conversely if food is scarce near to the pond, the population may spread thinly radially away from the pond or collect in pockets of high food source.

While you may of course have come across the same frog on a number of ocasions, it would be surprising if it was living in lonely splendour. It may be worth your while doing a 'garden' census next spring, checking all the likely refuges. You can add your own refuges, a bit of planking or old tile laid on a couple of bricks set half into the earth beneath a hedge or shrub in a dampish area seems to work well.

Two years ago I had ten individual frogs ranging from half grown juveniles to full adults, in an urban garden of just 50 squares metres, although this last summer the highest number was down to five.

CM