Autumn is a great month for gardeners for many reasons. Not only are your fruits and veggies at their bountiful best, but according to experts, ’tis the season to do less.

Leaving unraked leaves on your lawn, for instance, can provide a comfortable place for struggling wildlife, while keeping ivy unpruned can provide a rare late-blooming food source for birds and pollinators.

And according to Chris Bonnett, the founder of GardeningExpress.co.uk, autumn is a good time to ignore certain animal-friendly weeds too.

“Weeds don’t always have to be bad news – some of them can actually be very valuable for your local wildlife,” he said.

“You don’t have to let your garden become overrun, but if you’ve got space, leaving a patch of weeds to grow can make a huge difference to the biodiversity in your garden,” Bonnet added – weeds such as:

Sure, these are usually associated with early spring nectar. But per the gardening expert, “Their fluffy seed heads are a valuable food source for birds such as goldfinches and sparrows”.

That’s why leaving a few to go to seed can be so valuable for struggling wildlife.

Though they might sting us, they provide food for butterfly species like the red admiral and tortoiseshell.

“When temperatures start to drop, nettle patches also provide shelter for insects preparing to overwinter,” Bonnett added.

Despite its reputation as a weed, the Wildlife Trusts points out that the seeds of the thistle offer food to birds like goldfinches, even after their flowers stop providing nectar for butterflies like the small copper.

Bonnett agrees: “As their flowering season comes to an end and their seed heads are ripening, they offer a feast for flocks of goldfinches and other birds.”

Not only can these provide welcome relief for any accidental stings (seeing as nettles have their place in your winter garden), but they deliver both food and shelter too.

“Dock’s large, broad leaves create sheltered microhabitats and their leaves are a vital food source for the larvae of insects like the green dock beetle,” Bonnett said.

“In late summer and early autumn, its seeds provide a reliable food source for seed-eating birds.”

You might notice this growing in the cracks of pavements and on your borders.

“Its broad leaves provide food for small mammals like rabbits, as well as insects such as bees, hoverflies and certain caterpillars,” Bonnett said.

“The dense rosettes also offer shelter for insects and other small creatures, making it a valuable plant for biodiversity.”

Though slugs are rarely welcome in a gardener’s backyard, the Royal Horticultural Society have not classified them as “pests” for years now.

That’s partly because less than a quarter of the species in the UK actually eat your plants, while all of the maligned molluscs provide a food source for the UK’s shrinking bird population.

For these reasons, British gardeners have been discouraged from using pellets to deter the critters.

Other methods, like placing a halved orange or melon skin in your garden or conducting torchlit searches at night, can remove them from vulnerable saplings without killing all of them off indiscriminately.

And, as BBC Gardeners’ World writes, a bulb of garlic can help too.

According to the publication, “A home-made garlic spray can be effective in deterring slugs and snails from your plants” if applied regularly.

Allicin, a compound in garlic, both helps to repel and, sometimes, kill slugs and snails, botanist James Wong wrote for The Guardian.

For that reason, he says, you should only apply it to the most vulnerable plants (young seedlings and tender-stemmed plants count).

To make the garlic water concentrate, Gardeners’ World writes, boil one bulb of garlic per litre of water (they did two bulbs and two litres) until they’re soft.

James Wong, meanwhile, recommends blending a bulb of garlic with 1L of water, letting the liquid sit for ten minutes before straining “for the chemical reaction that creates allicin to complete.”

James uses his blitzed, rather than cooked, garlic water as-is, but Gardeners’ World dilutes two tablespoons of their boiled concentrate per 5L of water.

Whichever method you choose, you can spray it on affected plants “just as night begins to fall.”

For targeted slug and snail management, you should apply it “liberally.”

Gardeners’ World says you should spray or water with it once a week or after rain.

Specialist growers Sienna Hosta agree: they say we should water our plants with the stuff once weekly from February ’til October, when slugs are more active.

We should reapply it more often after heavy rainfall.