When I was young and had more energy, I would make cages out of some kind of mesh (chicken wire? I forget) about a foot or 18 inches tall, put it around the HTs and fill the cage with maple leaves.

Now I'm much more lazy and dump the leaves on the the west side of the miniatures, wiggle it in a bit to hook the leaves on the little canes and thorns, and expect some to blow away.
When I put alot around my newly planted daylilies last year, I just wiggled them in with my hands. Some blew away, but enough stayed around the base to protect my little E. Salter daylilies, which all survived.

I planted a very tender dwarf clematis this year. It was suggested to me that I dump a bunch of loose (maple) leaves on it, invert a pot over it and put a rock on the pot. I haven't gotten around to doing that yet to see how well it goes.

Hopefully someone with better procedures will come along.

I haven't done it, but I was thinking that a big roll of bird netting would work nicely. Just hold it down with a few landscaping cloth staples (or whatever they're called).

I mow them first, and then just dump them in the beds. If you have them in bags, just trample all the bags, which gets the leaves flatter, and then put them in.

I have big, long rows of a mixture of grass clippings and mowed leaves that are now completely exposed to the wind in the vegetable garden. A few leaves blow away, but not many.

I don't have a bag attachment for my mower so I use a Black and Decker Leaf Hog with a vacuum that mulches up the leaves wonderfully and just dump the bag on the beds and in the compost.

Last year, the only leaves that went on the garden were the ones I shoveled out of the street. They were soaking wet and matted together (cottonwood). I covered them with grass clippings and partially finished compost. Nothing blew away.

Leaves ... you guys have leaves? Well, I'm jealous!

At least I don't have to rake, LOL.

Bonnie

Thank you, everyone! I will try chipping some up in the shredder to see if they will stay in the beds better. I thought about using burlap or something to hold them down, but that sounds like a PITA as most of my beds have shrubs growing in them. I might try that over the new DL beds, tho.

Really just need to make a bigger compost area that I could manage with the tractor & make a huge honkin' batch of compost. The leaves/newsprint/coffee pile is steamin'.

Cheers,
Michelle