Baytree Garden Centre's column on how to handle your leaves this autumn

In this week's Out in the Garden column, Baytree Garden Centre's Mark Cox offers his advice on dealing with leaves in the garden.

October is just around the corner which means it won’t be long now before trick or treat and carved pumpkins - that resemble a certain relation to the present Mrs Cox - start adorning people’s homes and gardens.

I have nothing against Halloween nor pumpkins and, to be perfectly honest, I enjoy carving a pumpkin as much as the next man but that might be down to the fact that when I’m scooping the innards out I like to pretend that I’m in “Waking the Dead” as I go about performing a post-mortem on the pumpkin.

There is no doubt that the autumn is a riot of colours. Whichever way you look you’re greeted by beautiful vistas that could very well inspire the classic painters of old. I’m sure Turner would have made an incredible job of painting the woods near me where I take Teddy dog for his walks.

Sadly for me my enjoyment of the autumn spectacle in my garden lasts for about a week before Mother Nature decides that leaves are so last year, and within two minutes, all of my trees and shrubs are reduced to just sticks.

I usually get nightmares at this time of the year and will often wake in the middle of the night much to the present Mrs Cox’s anger shouting “leavessssssss”.

I think it’s because I know that at any instant my garden sanctuary, which I call the shed, can so easily be cut off from the rest of the garden buried under a thick blanket of leaves.

Worst of all I’ll know that this much needed sanctuary will be lost until the spring when the path is passable once more. Quite frankly this cannot be allowed to happen.

This year however I have formulated a four point plan, using mainly crayons and felt tip pens. I’ve created a fantastic looking wall chart to help visualise my battle plan.

Stage one involves marking the edges of the path to the shed with garden canes that way when the leaves do fall and cover the path I’ll know where to sweep the leaves away from.

As you all know, wet leaves when left on a path invariably leads to a trip to nearest Accident and Emergency department.

Stage two is more reactive than pro-active. I’ve invested in a super duper set of leaf grabbers with the sole intention of harvesting every last leaf to go into my compost bin. No leaf is going to get left behind on my watch.

Stage three will see me raising the blade on my lawn mower and mowing the lawn fairly regularly.

I’ll not actually be cutting the grass but the blades will be chopping the leaves on the lawn which will be neatly collected in the hopper.

Again the contents will go straight into the compost bin.

Stage four is designed for the days when the sun is shining and the air is cool as it will involve raking up any remaining leaves into large piles for jumping in later should the mood take me.

I have also built into my plan rest days, on these special rest days I am not allowed to lift a leaf nor allow myself to think about a leaf.

These enforced leaf picking rest days where a stipulation from the present Mrs Cox via her solicitor.

It’s just a waiting game now.

Mr Bradshaw at number 41 had his leaves fall on the 18th and Mrs Jamiesons of number 38 had hers fall on the 20th so I know it won’t be long before it’s my turn.

My best guess is that I have just five days left to prepare and fine tweak my plan.