Written by Gillian Chalabi:

"It has been a year since we moved to this beautiful area of Mid Wales, to Eglwysfach. Mostly I have just watched the garden and noted where the sun shone in different seasons and at different times of the day. The work to be done now, as autumn sets in, is about nourishing the soil of this neglected garden.

In this respect, comfrey is a plant that is particularly precious to me. You must go for the Russian variety, the Bocking 14 culture, Symphytum x uplandicum, propagated from root cuttings, from, for example, the organic people, Henry Doublday Research Assocation at Ryton).

I quickly found a spot for the comfrey plants I brought with me. Their presence comforts me, I know they are an ally in the garden. They are very ordinary with unspectacular mauve flowers, but the point is not to let them flower.

Their value is their broad, generous leaves, and it these which you can cut down about four times a year, and use as a free nutrient. They are adaptable too, so that every garden could have a patch, even if you only have a shady place to put them.

Already I have cut and thrown some of the leaves into the compost bin where they will add potash and other valuable nutrients to it. Or I have scattered them around the one fruit tree I have planted, or chopped them up and put them at the bottom of pots when potting up tomato, pepper or aubergine plants. They are also good for potatoes and for raspberries... the list could go on.

Then there are the autumn leaves, falling from the trees. They take a while to break down, and so like grass it is best to give them a separate area in which to rot.

You do this by enclosing a few square feet of land with four posts and stretch wide- meshed netting around them. Gather leaves from wherever you can and pop them in - and then just leave for a year or two.

Gardening is not all hard work. The thing is to get in place these processes, such as a compost heap or bin, and a place for comfrey and for leaves. ( Incidentally, Potter's recycling centre, Old Station Yard at Machynlleth sells good compost bins for just £10 ).

A quicker, neater way to rot leaves is to put them in large-sized, strong plastic bags with no holes, which was my method this year. I filled them up a third with water, tied the top, and left them. The wet speeds up the rotting. Also I had an old dustbin and put leaves in there, open to the rain. As they rotted, they left room for more to be added. Leaves do not add many nutrients to the soil, their function is to add humus into the soil, and this helps to retain water which in turn releases nutrients already present.

Worms love rotted leaves, too, as do the numerous micro organisms which make up living soil. So leaves are a vital, essential imput into any sustainable garden. And surely these days with rising costs of petro-chemicals such as fertilisers, that is what we want.

Next time I hope to write about another autumn task, mulching - a beautiful process in the garden because it's not you that does all the hard work!"

Written by Gillian Chalabi from Eglwys Fach.