The Lake Highlands Community Garden is requesting help from the community.

Local gardeners aren't asking for much. They just need your leaves.

Based on the recent snow storm, much of Lake Highlands has cleaned up, trimmed their trees and hauled a large amount of yard debris - including leaves - to the curb for bulk trash pickup.

Volunteer, gardener and local worm rancher, Heather Rinaldi sees an opportunity in this.

"Think of if as a last minute call to action, since this is probably the last time of the season for leaves," she says.

"It's bulk trash pickup time for lots of LH neighborhoods, and hundreds, if not thousands, of bags of leaves are sitting on our neighborhood sidewalks."

"My sincere hope is that our friends and neighbors will consider bringing their leaves to the community garden instead of letting them go to into the landfill."

Rinaldi has a hunch that the city's trash collection teams are a bit behind with all the brushy cleanup.

She's probably right, based on the sheer number of Lake Highlands residents who experienced tree damage in the recent storm.

It's an opportunity she and other local gardeners would like to capitalize on.

"We are desperately low on ground cover and mulch at the garden, so we can handle just about any quantity we're lucky enough to get," she says.

"Wouldn't it be wonderful if our community gardeners didn't have to pay for compost, when free future compost is sitting on our neighborhood curbsides?"

"This is a really easy way for people to chip in and do the right thing," says Rinaldi. "Leaves composted in an open system with oxygen don't produce any toxic methane, versus the leaves that sit in a landfill releasing the dangerous gas and decreasing our air quality."

There's only one stipulation - please limit your donation to leaves only. Other bulky trash would create a problem for the garden, so just your leaves are needed.

The common areas near the compost bin are a great spot to drop your leaves. Rest assured it's a easy trip - just past the old armory building on Gorforth, off White Rock Trail.

If you head over on Saturday, you'll find lots of gardeners and volunteers at the weekend's Potato Planting Seminar, hosted by Nancy Wilson in the Donation Garden. The seminar begins at 10:00 a.m., so there will be plenty of gardeners on hand to help direct your leaf deposit.

For more information about the garden, email .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or visit the group's website at http://www.lhgarden.org.

The community gardeners of Lake Highlands would like to thank you in advance for sharing your leaf donations!