This autumn make the most of the fallen leaves in your garden We’re sorry, this service is currently unavailable. Please try again later. Dismiss By Megan Backhouse Normal text size Advertisement Tradition had it that, as autumn inched towards winter, gardeners would start cutting back, raking up and generally removing anything that was once green but had turnedbrownish. Herbaceous perennials would be snipped off at ground level, ornamental grasses assiduously reduced to short stumps, faded flowers removed, shaggy shrubs trimmed, fallen leaves bagged – and on it went. There was a lot of tidying to be done. The head feathers of the long-tailed manakin in this illustration by Richard Brinsley Hinds represent ‘lake red’.