My personal opinion is to leave them. The majority of woodland perennials will do just fine: ferns, hostas, solomon's seal, astilbe, whatever. Do you really need to plant a groundcover? If so, perhaps you could create a small mound for it. In natural woodland areas, mounds can be found, sometimes covered with mosses and small ferns. It is not out of character to create such an area.

Yes, in general, the leaves are pure gold, helping to enrich the area free of charge. You could remove some, chop them up with your lawnmower on the side and return them as mulch when you plant your perennials.

Small trees are also part of the natural woodland (for example, dogwood). I would certainly try to identify what you have before systematically eliminating based on size.

In my woodland area, I used wood chips and grass clippings to create winding paths; I used dead trees to line the paths for a more permanent look. These paths helped define the area and create alcoves for featured plants.

Hope that gives you some ideas.

Identify anything you may want to remove. The first thing I would do is to create paths forming islands. My paths are bare dirt which have become moss covered over the years. And I DO NOT line my paths with dead trees or branches. I believe this detracts from the woodland feeling. I agree that there is no need to remove the leaves. Do you want to create a woodland "garden" or a "woodland" garden. If the latter I would not use Hostas, Astilbes or other exotic plants, but concentrate on woodland plants. This also would include using ivy, myrtle and japanese pachysandra as groundcovers. Instead use our native pachysandra, foam flower, May Apple. You do not want, or at least I would not want, a solid groundcover.

I agree with leaving as is and do not add non-native plants. Non-natives planted in woodlands tend to change the natural ecology of the woodlands. And I guess my methods also to some extent.

I have simply picked a route to walk through my woodlands in a bit of wandering pattern. I prune only enough to allow me to walk through. In the more open area I mow to the edge and then prune the "walkway". Some times it sort of forms archways and the deer have taken to using my winding paths. It really makes a lot of neat bird viewing spots as well. Since I prune the lower branches of some young trees and stomp down (cracking) fallen limbs that are bending new growth the deer seem to like the access to suitable velvet removing rubbing spots.

In as much as I deter some native species (like ivy, oak) from the yard "proper" I am diligent to keep the yard items out of the woodland.

We made the mistake of taking up the leaves in our backyard woodland. Weeds and invasives took over and 2 years later we are still trying to get control of it and restore it to its natural state. Now we leave the leaves as is and now that I'm doing spring "clean up" in the front yard, I am bringing twigs and branches and forest litter to the back.

When we do our spring brush up of the small bit of woods in our backyard, we 'do' remove the leaves. Our woods is all native and we have re-introduced 50 native species to the area but originally it was already lush with spring plants like Jack-in-the-pulpit, dogtoothed violets and trilliums. What we found was that after putting up our privacy fence, the leaf layer started getting too deep and the following spring the Jacks, dogtoothed violets and trilliums couldn't break through the deep layer of leaves. So now we leave the leaves for winter protection and take them off at this time of year to allow the spring wildflowers to emerge. We bagged the leaves and will compost them to return the nutrients to the ground throughout summer and autumn.

Barb

I agree with dbockwoldt. I cleared heavy leaf cover off one area, and dumped it on the side. The soil underneath was almost bare, and fluffy, quite lovely. That year the cleared area went to wild charlie and nightshade. The area with a foot and a half of heavy leaves became a lush fern bed.

The leaf cover is too heavy for many plants to get a start though. I would rake off the top layer of leaves only in the planting areas, and insert plugs or starts. Every place, sun or shade, that I cleared to bare earth went to invasives. I now plant shrubs or trees using a slit trench if possible to keep the ground sealed off from invasives.

I have a sunny invasive weed patch still giving me a headache where I cleared the soil to bare dirt to plant a traditional garden, and then got sick and couldnt tend it.

I have a sunny invasive weed patch still giving me a headache

I think this case is a good example... the gardener cleared the area to the ground but wasn't able to replace the lost vegetation right away due to illness. It's like Iraq where the so called "evil doers" are removed and a polical vacuum occurs, the "weeds" aka "insurgency" are more than willing to move in with a vengence.

I would always encourage anyone clearing land to replace it with native stuff as quickly as possible after clearing and have a good plan of action so that it can be done in a swift and organized manner. That's what I did when I removed hundreds and hundreds of pounds of the dreaded "Garlic Mustard" from my woods. As soon as it was out I replaced it with native species so that all the seed that had fallen from the GM would have less of a chance to take a foothold. I'm 18 months post GM removal and have only had to pull less than 5 new baby GM's.

Barb

I ran into a similar situation when I removed my multiflora roses. If the ground is clean, just leave the leaves there and keep the original woodland. But do rake the leaves and clean up the ground vines. Then you can either plant new things, or put the old leaves back after the cleaning.

I'm still working on cleaning multiflora and Jap honeysuckle combination. There are some other long canes, like wild blackberry or something. But I'm glad the invasive species are disappearing.

Then I'll need to deal with wild onion/garlic and garlic mustard. They are not huge problem yet....

Go out into the pristine woodlands that we all admire and ask yourself when was the last time it was raked.DONT disturb the ground at all if its unnecessary.Any disturbances invite weeds.If your intoducing plants shoehorn them in.But leave the surface debris in place.

I am introducing ground covers as I go instead. I give the leaves winter to cover the dirt, then it is out of there! I am still tempted to go around with a blow torch and singe the dirt. I got no dormant wild flowers when I cleared. I get weeds blowing in but I am ready to be at the point of weeding vs clearing, planting clearing.