Where you live in Blount County decides what you are allowed to do with your leaves.
Maryville will vacuum them off your lawn if you put them in the right place at the right time. Alcoa will take them only if you bag them first. And if you live in the unincorporated county, nobody is coming at all.
Every fall, homeowners get this wrong: leaves raked to the curb in a town that wants bags, bags stacked in a town that wants loose piles, and burn piles lit without the permit that makes them legal. So here is the whole county in one guide. We verified every rule below against the city and state sources in August 2026, and we update this page when the rules change.
Maryville: the city vacuums loose leaves, on its schedule
Maryville runs the best deal in the county. Starting October 15, city crews with leaf vacuums work through town zone by zone, roughly one pass per zone each month, through the end of the year. A final catch-all pass starts January 4, 2027, and the city asks for any remaining leaves at the curb by January 3. Crews come back once more in mid-March for a single spring pass.
The rules that make it work:
- Leaves go loose in your front lawn, close to the curb. Do not bag them.
- Never pile leaves in the street, in a ditch, or on a storm drain. Piled leaves clog drains and flood streets, and crews will not take them from there.
- Keep leaves separate from brush and limbs. The city composts the leaves, so mixed piles get skipped.
Which zone you are in, and when crews come, is on the city’s “Know Your Zone” calendar at maryvillegov.com. Questions go to the Public Works office at (865) 273-3302.
The catch is the schedule. One pass a month means your leaves can sit on the lawn for weeks waiting on the truck, and a wet November mat of oak leaves does real damage while it waits. We wrote about exactly what that does to a fescue lawn in What happens if you just leave the leaves.
One more Maryville rule that surprises people: burning leaves inside city limits is illegal. Not permit-required. Illegal. Other open burning in the city takes a fire department permit and a site visit first, but leaves are off the list entirely. The fire department is at (865) 273-3655 if you want it from them directly.
Alcoa: bag them or keep them
Alcoa has no leaf vacuum program. Leaves count as bulky waste, and bulky waste runs on the second and fourth weeks of each month. The rules:
- Leaves must be bagged.
- Bags go at the curb by 6:30 a.m. on your regular collection day during a bulky-waste week, and no earlier than the Friday before that week.
- Brush and limbs are a separate program, collected the first and third weeks, unbagged. Do not mix the two.
Here is what the rulebook does not tell you: a single mature maple drops enough leaves to fill dozens of bags. Bagging a wooded Alcoa lot by hand is a full weekend of work, twice, and the bags still have to hit a two-week window. Details are on the city’s sanitation pages at cityofalcoa-tn.gov.
Unincorporated Blount County: your leaves, your problem
Outside the two cities there is no leaf collection of any kind. You have three legal options.
Compost or mulch them. Free, and fine for a light leaf fall. A mower with a mulching blade handles a thin layer. It does not handle what a stand of oaks drops in November.
Haul them. You can take yard waste to a disposal site yourself. Call before you load the truck, because what each site accepts changes.
Burn them. Legal in the unincorporated county, with a permit. From October 15 through May 15, Tennessee requires a free burn permit from the Division of Forestry for any debris burn, leaf piles included. You can get one online at BurnSafeTN.org seven days a week or by phone at 877-350-BURN on weekdays. Each permit is good for one day. Leaves and woody debris are allowed; tires, plastics, and shingles never are. And a county burn ban overrides your permit whenever dry weather triggers one, which happens most falls. The Blount County Fire Protection District posts current ban status.
We wrote the full permit walkthrough, including what the permit actually requires of you, in Can you burn leaves in Tennessee?
The part all three have in common
However your town handles pickup, the leaves sit on your lawn until the system takes them, and East Tennessee falls are wet. A matted leaf layer smothers fescue exactly when it should be recovering from summer. The pickup rules solve the disposal problem. They do nothing about the lawn problem.
If a rule on this page changes
Cities adjust these programs year to year, and Maryville publishes its exact zone dates each fall. We check this page against the sources below every season and correct it when something moves. If you spot a change before we do, tell us and we will fix it.
Sources, last verified August 19, 2026: City of Maryville “Know Your Zone” 2026 calendar and leaf collection announcements (maryvillegov.com) · City of Alcoa brush and bulky waste collection (cityofalcoa-tn.gov) · Tennessee Division of Forestry debris burn permits (tn.gov, BurnSafeTN.org) · Blount County Fire Protection District (blountfire.org).
Lawngevity does leaf removal across Maryville, Alcoa, and the rest of Blount County. What it costs and how the flat fee works: What leaf removal costs in East Tennessee.
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