Not raking up the leaves.

What do you mean;

Bugs

Gone

Get rid

If you do it right, the bugs won't ever be gone, it'll become fantastic, biome rich soil/mulch to spread on your (or someone's )garden so you won't need to "get rid".

I assumed the bugs hibernated under  the leaves and then buggered off in the spring.

As above, the leaves will become lovely bug rich soil compost 👍

I've been working in some national trust gardens and they now blow all the leaves onto  the flower beds and leave them there to mulch down, rather than collect them

I guess the bigger bugs like Beatles and the like will hunker down and move on when the time is right so they do benefit from the protection

Leaving a good, healthy scattering of leaves on the lawn is definitely better for it, it's just that a poorly populated soil will not have enough worms to deal with a thick layer, hence perhaps the damage last year to the grass.  Try to leave at least some out on the lawn to get eaten; it'll help in the long run but it's a slow process if you have poor soil under there already.  As for the bulk leaf heap, yes, that's best used within the garden to provide a surface mulch right away, unless you're planning on using it in the future as leaf mould to enrich your compost.  It just takes at least two years to rot down well enough in a pit for that purpose.  If you can leave the odd heap under bushes, behind a shed or whatever, that'll provide a good home for bugs over the winter.

I raked a good proportion of ours into the beds this year. Hoping, like above, they just naturally mulch. In the past I've also dug a hole in the beds and just buried leaves too.

Makes me happy to read this. It’s part of a natural cyclical process. Seeing people collecting them and chucking in the green bin or bin bag is saddening.

Thick wads of leaves do kill the grass so the easiest options are:

A) Take the collection bag off the mower and simply mulch them where they lay.

Or

B) Blow / Rake them to the boarders to break down there

Seeing people using a blower to get them off their drive and into the road for someone else to deal with is saddening

FTFY - as for the OP it usually takes a year or two to turn leaves into lovely leaf mould (rich compost). If the cage is too big you can transfer them into bin bags that you've jabbed holes in with a fork and they'll finish the process in there. Or as others have said rake them into your borders and they'll be gone by late spring.

https://www.rhs.org.uk/soil-composts-mulches/leaf-mould

Perhaps we need a dedicated wildlife friendly gardening and a gardening thread to share advice? There was no mow May and let it bloom June that were very helpful but perhaps we could have a year round one with fruit, veg and flower growing advice - in an environmentally sound way - all in one place? Will this thread re-title @zippykona ?

I've left the leaves. My fil gave me 5 biodegradable bin bags full of his leaves, these will be put on the apple trees and roses, when mulched down. 

We have lots of bushes and shrubberies in our garden which need cutting back so earlier this year I fed the cuttings through a small electric garden waste muncher  and then dispersed that under the various bushes and borders.

I planted a mint in one section two months back, between a hedge and a low wall, which I'm hoping will spread as much as mint is notorious for spreading! Want to plant companion plants with it, ideally perennials, but might just settle for French marigolds which should self seed I think.

I'm not much of s gardener, don't care that much, but if I can introduce color and pleasant smells to the garden near my shed I'll be moderately satisfied.

I put the bulk of my garden waste into a compost bin...(only a very small garden) along with select kitchen/food waste.

Some I dump into the flower beds.

I've never composted before, but theres a thriving eco system of creepy crawlies in there at the moment, so it should turn into good soil?

It's worth raking them up and composting them properly. The problem with leaving them where they fall is it leads to disease as all that leaf eating fungus gets splashed back up into the tree.

Depends on the tree, but we killed a plum tree by being lazy about raking the leaves up.

It also takes a lot of nitrogen from the soil to break down leaves and wood chippings. So while it's good once it's rotted down to a compost, during the process it's actually detrimental. Hence it gets referred to as "well rotted leaf mulch" ditto "well rotted horse manure" etc. The raw version is no good for your garden.

We have a heavy clay soil. I leave all the leaves and I scatter some manure over it all to try and improve it. Once the boys are past the playing on the lawn stage I plan on flower beds all round.

If you are hoping to convert your lawn into a wildflower meadow, you need to be aiming to lower the fertility of the lawn area to give the wildflowers a chance. If this is the case then clearing up the leaves on the law is a good idea you can always mulch them or put them on the flower beds.

When I worked on the council my main job in winter was driving a tractor collecting the leaves in the parks. They were all tipped into roll-on/off cages and dumped at the local allotments. Plot owners would come and ask for them to be dumped directly onto their plots for mulch.

Tinas, you're right about the rotting of wood chippings absorbing nitrogen but not so with leaf mulch.  The whole point of leaving leaves on the surface of grass is for worm food; the worms eat the leaves, very effectively burying the existing nitrogen within the leaves deeper in the soil and creating an aerated soil structure while they're at it.  A really beneficial outcome but can take a few years to start getting it right. Leaves in a heap will rot more slowly than conventional compost, so while you can mix some into a regular compost heap, bulk leaves are better rotted in their own heaps.  A layer in a border under bushes will help suppress weeds next spring and so long as it's not a vast amount, will not materially affect the soil nitrogen.

Garden compost: two heaps - one for filling, one for rotting and extracting on an annual cycle.

With leaf mould, you need three heaps ideally, to give it enough time to rot properly. One for filling, one rotting quietly and the other for providing two year old to add to compost for potting or enriching soil.

The fungus issue is unusual and 'could' be the result of a deep mulch of rotting leaves at the base of the tree but could just as easily be completely unrelated.  Easily prevented anyway by layering a bit of clean fireplace ash at the base of your fruit trees and if they're cropping strongly, they need the phosphate.

For reference, I was brought up as the unpaid, slave labour in a specialist plant breeding nursery run by my folks for many years.  They took a very scientific approach to their chosen trade, to the extent that they quietly maintained significant breed stock of rarities on behalf of RHS Kew, Edinburgh Botanics and a number of European and North American institutions.

I’ve never composted before, but theres a thriving eco system of creepy crawlies in there at the moment, so it should turn into good soil?

You need to make sure there's a balance of nitrogen (lawn cuttings, green stems and leaves etc) and carbon (woody stuff, cardboard etc). Too much of one or the other will lead to a sludgy mulch rather than decent compost. And try to turn it over occasionally to get fresh air into the heap and help some of the aerobic processes.

Our approach is to take the top fresh layer off and put it to one side, then extract all the good stuff putting it through a very coarse mesh (about 50mm) to trap any big lumps that are not fully broken down, then mix them with the fresh stuff as it goes back on. Do that a couple of times a year and you'll be fine.