I swear by this! And, come spring, I don't rake them off the garden. I just move them over wherever there's a plant coming up.
I mean....plants come up every year in the woods with a covering of leaves....why not my garden too?

I blow leaves from the yard into the beds when they fall. I have a lot of extras sometimes so I bag them to use in the compost bins later in the year. I do rake back some of the excess in spring, but not all by any means.

I love this tip and wisdom.
NOT doing garden work is beneficial.

Good tip. I do this ... even raking more leaves under my azaleas. They block weed growth in the Spring and as they decompose, they turn my soil more acid which the azaleas love.

I do this depending on the type of leaves. I dump all the maple leaves in my rose garden for insulation. They curl and stay dry, and eventually break up. Same for the oak leaves. But the cottonwood leaves mat, stay wet and get nasty, so they get thrown out.

My earthworms really appreciate the leaves being left for them.

I run the leaves for my spring bulb beds through the lawn mower, which is more work, but the chopped leaves stay fluffy and don't mat. I've had problems in the past with bulb shoots growing up through whole, wet leaves, especially with tulips. Picture the leaf with the shoot having pierced it and growing right up through it. When the leaf dries, it squeezes the shoot and prevents it from unfurling. This usually results in misshapen leaves. For the rest of my beds, I just leave the leaves whole.

The magnolia and holly leaves take forever to break down so I rake some of them....the rest and other leaves I leave.

I run the lawnmower with the mulching blade over the piles of leaves and collect the leaf mulch. We have left whole leaves before and found that snakes like to hide beneath the warmth. EEK! Then in the spring or fall, depending on the need, we put bark mulch over the leaf mulch and end up needing way less of the expensive stuff.