Circle of Life in the Yard
November 18th, 2025
Gardening is recycling at its core… or at least it could/should be.
George playing with his compost.
When done thoughtfully, growing plants in the yard returns as much to nature as it uses, creating an endless (sorry, Lion King) circle of life.
Things feed things until it all comes back around. It’s what I like most about composting. When I yank weeds, gather fallen tree leaves, and collect coffee grounds and kitchen peelings in my under-the-sink stainless-steel pail, I don’t look at it as work. It’s harvesting free fertilizer and organic matter.
I can’t imagine gardening without composting. A hallmark of almost all of the best gardeners I’ve seen in action is a compost bin or three they seem to have tucked away somewhere in the yard.
It’s never made much sense to me to bag and toss leaves, weeds, and grass clippings and to grind organic kitchen waste down a water-hungry garbage disposer, then turn around and buy bagged mulch and soil amendments from the garden center. Why not make our own out of what we already have?
To me, falling leaves in autumn isn’t nature dumping its trash but a gift of free plant-growth magic.
Sure, it takes some work hauling (I look at it more as much-needed exercise), but the result is the best growth stimulator you can give your plants. Compost bins are almost like mini power plants for the yard, generating the fuel that reverses the stunting effect of our heavy-clay “soil.”
Top-dressing the lawn with compost also is one of the best practices to aid its growth without adding any chemicals or pesticides.
Almost nothing leaves my yard that could be put to use in the garden somehow.
Besides everything from the yard and kitchen that goes into my two bins of compost, I shred my junk mail and other waste paper into strips. They also get added to the bins.
I pile up my woody prunings from trees and shrubs and run them through a chipper-shredder to create mulch, which cuts down on the amounts I have to buy.
Bigger logs from cut-down dead trees get saved until they dry, then I burn them in an outdoor fire pit (nice on cool evenings and when making S’mores with the grandkids). The ashes then get added to the compost piles, where they’re diluted enough to add root-fueling potassium without being overly alkaline.
In dry weather, I save kitchen-sink water and use it to water the flower pots.
When I’ve hired tree companies to thin and cut down the really big trees in my yard, I kept the ground-up wood chips and used them to mulch my ornamental beds.
When mowing the lawn, I let the clips lie. Not only does that save work, but the clips break down to add enough organic matter and nutrients to equal one commercial fertilizer treatment per year. (Clips don’t cause thatch, by the way.)
I don’t mention all of this because I see myself as some kind of holier-than-thou savior of the Earth. It just seems like a common-sense and money-saving way to garden.
And it happens to be a circle of life.