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Leaves, Brush, and Yard Waste by Town in Greater Portland, Maine: Who Picks Up and Who Makes You Haul It
Sometime in the second half of October the maples on your street let go all at once, and the pile at the end of the driveway stops being a chore and starts being a logistics problem. Most people handle it the way they handled it wherever they lived before: rake it into bags, put the bags at the curb, wait for the truck.
In Greater Portland that plan fails in ten towns out of eleven.
Here is the fact nobody publishes in one place, and it is the whole reason this page exists: of the eleven towns inside twenty five minutes of downtown Portland, exactly one runs a fall curbside leaf pickup, and it is Westbrook. Portland has a curbside leaf program, but in 2026 it ran in the spring and closed on May 8. Everywhere else, the leaves are yours to move, and what it costs you depends on a variable most people never think about: what you drive.
The one town that comes and gets it
Westbrook is the outlier, and it is generous by local standards. The city collects brush at the curb and leaves at the curb, in two separate windows that barely overlap. Under the most recently published schedule, brush ran October 20 through October 31 with piles of seven cubic yards or less taken from the curb, and leaves ran October 27 to the first snowfall.
Two Westbrook details matter more than the dates. Leaves must be in paper bags with no tape on them, which is an oddly specific rule that gets bags left behind every year. And brush and leaves are collected on different schedules by different equipment, so a pile with both in it is a pile that does not get taken.
As of late July the city still had its 2025 program posted. That is normal. Which brings us to the thing you should actually take away from this page.
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Fall 2026 dates do not exist yet, in any town
I checked every town's own site the last week of July. Not one of them has posted a fall 2026 leaf or brush date. Portland shows only the completed spring program. South Portland says "usually in November" and promises dates closer to the event. Westbrook still displays 2025. Windham has posted its spring window and nothing after. Gorham announces its brush Saturdays in the local paper shortly before they happen.
This is a scheduling reality, not negligence: towns set these dates in September and October once they know their public works staffing. So if you are reading a confident fall 2026 date anywhere right now, it was invented or it was copied from last year. Check the town's own page in mid September.
Windham deserves a specific warning here. The town's live leaf and brush page is at /586/, but an orphaned 2019 page still sits at /499/ and still ranks in search. Residents land on it, read the 2019 fall dates as current, and drive out to a closed site. Confirm you are on the page that shows a 2026 spring window before you trust any date on it.
Everyone else: you haul it, and the sticker comes first
Nine towns have no curbside yard waste program at all. In every one of them, the first step is not raking. It is buying a sticker or a pass, in advance, usually at Town Hall, and usually not at the facility itself.
The spread on that sticker is remarkable for towns that share a school district boundary or two:
| Town | Annual resident pass | Where you buy it |
|---|---|---|
| Yarmouth | $2.00 | Town Hall only |
| Freeport | $6.00 | Town Hall or the facility |
| Falmouth | $15.00 (calendar 2026) | Town Hall or Public Works |
| Cumberland | $40.00 annual, $15 day, $10 single trip | Town Hall, in advance |
| Cape Elizabeth | No charge | Recycling Center, with proof of residency |
| South Portland | First sticker free, second vehicle $5 | Transfer Facility, two proofs of residency |
Cumberland made one change worth knowing: effective January 1, 2026, residents 65 and over pay no fee, with proof of age and residency. Cape Elizabeth affixes its decals itself, in the lower driver's side corner of the windshield, and will not hand you one to install at home.
Portland runs a different mechanism entirely. Instead of a sticker it issues an ECard, good for ten items per year on a July 1 to June 30 cycle, where one cubic yard of yard waste counts as one item. Two catches. The ECard goes to residential property owners only, one per property even in a multiunit building, so renters are structurally excluded. And you must show it to the attendant before you enter Riverside Recycling at 910 Riverside Street. Show up without it, or after your ten items are gone, and you pay the full commercial rate.
The rule that surprises everyone: price by vehicle, not by volume
Cape Elizabeth charges for brush by what you drove it in. An automobile is free. A minivan or SUV is $10 per load. A pickup, van, or single axle trailer is $15. A double axle trailer is $20. A non-CDL dump or rack truck is $30.
The same three contractor bags of clippings therefore cost nothing in a sedan and $10 in a Highlander. If you have a friend with a car and a weekend, that is a real arbitrage, and the town's fee schedule is entirely open about it.
South Portland prices by vehicle too, but only for the woody stream. Brush, branches, logs, and small stumps up to six inches in diameter run $5 for a car, $10 for a van or small trailer, $20 for a pickup, and $30 to $50 for a pickup with extended sides or a large trailer. Leaves and grass are free for residents in any size vehicle, which makes the sorting job the whole ballgame: mix a few branches into your leaf load and you have converted a free trip into a paid one.
Scarborough draws the same line even harder. The town has no dump of its own, sends residents to the Casella transfer station at 594 County Road (which is physically in Westbrook, not Scarborough), and its own guidance reads: "Please, do not mix any small branches or other yard debris with leaves or grass." Leaves and grass free with ID. Branches in the load, and the free program does not apply.
What each facility will refuse
Stumps are the near universal no. Falmouth, Cumberland, Freeport, and Yarmouth all state it plainly, and Cape Elizabeth excludes stumps and stumpage outright. Yarmouth will take trees and wood waste over twelve inches in diameter at $15 per cubic yard but still refuses stumps. Freeport's answer, and Cape Elizabeth's, is the same one: Riverside Recycling in Portland.
A few refusals are local and easy to trip over:
- Freeport rejects invasive plant clippings. Bittersweet, knotweed, and the rest go to Riverside in Portland, not to 100 Hedgehog Mountain Road. No other town in the group publishes this rule.
- Windham makes you take your bags home. Leaves are dumped loose into the pile and the empty bags leave with you. Nothing may be left at the site.
- Portland rejects soil without a soil test, a Maine DEP requirement the city adopted in June 2024. Your raised bed dirt is not yard waste.
- South Portland lets you transport in plastic but requires you to empty the bags onto the pile and carry the plastic back out. Paper is the only bag that stays.
- Cumberland caps brush at twelve inches in diameter, and takes it only at 11 Stiles Way, not at the Public Works garage. Windham uses the same twelve inch cap; Yarmouth's spring curbside pile caps at six inches.
Two towns with no year round option at all
Windham has no transfer station. Its leaf and brush site is a temporary drop-off at the end of Enterprise Drive off Route 302, open for roughly three weeks in spring and roughly three weeks in fall. Outside those two windows there is nowhere in Windham to legally put yard waste, which is worth planning around if you are clearing a lot in July.
Gorham's transfer station has been closed to the public since April 2, 2006, and residents still turn up looking for it. What the town does run, at 80 Huston Road, is leaves and grass clippings accepted any time with no appointment, and brush accepted only on two Saturdays in spring and two in fall, announced in the Gorham Times before each one. No published fee, no published size limit.
Hours are the other trap
These are not nine to five operations and several of them are closed on days you would assume they are open.
- Cape Elizabeth is closed Monday and Thursday, and open Tuesday until 7:00 pm.
- Yarmouth is closed Tuesday and Wednesday.
- Cumberland runs 8:30 am to 12:30 pm Wednesday through Saturday, extends Saturdays to 3:00 pm in October and November, and closes for the season the weekend before Thanksgiving or at the first measurable snowfall, whichever lands first.
- South Portland adds Sunday hours in May and November specifically for leaf season.
- Falmouth is open Tuesday and Thursday only from noon to 4:00 pm, then Friday 7:00 am to 5:00 pm and Saturday 9:00 am to 5:00 pm.
- Freeport runs Wednesday through Saturday, 7:00 am to 4:00 pm.
Cumberland's closing rule is the one that catches people. A November snow squall can end the season a week early, and the leaves you were going to deal with next weekend become a problem you own until April.
One honest caveat on prices
Two of these fee schedules are old. Freeport's posted disposal price list, the one carrying the five cents per pound brush rate, is stamped effective April 13, 2016. Yarmouth's is stamped April 1, 2024. Those are the only fee documents those towns publish, so they are what I have cited, but call ahead before you load a trailer on the strength of a ten year old number. The sticker prices are separately confirmed on current pages and are reliable.
Every other figure here came off the town's own site the last week of July 2026. If you find one that has changed, tell us and we will verify it and fix the page.
Once the leaves are handled, the rest of the household disposal map works on entirely different rules. Ordinary bags and bins are covered in trash and recycling by town, and the mattress, appliance, and paint problem runs on a third set of rules again in getting rid of big and hazardous stuff. If you are new here and still assembling the list of things nobody told you, moving to Portland, Maine is the first month checklist, and property taxes by town explains why two towns ten minutes apart run services this differently. And if you would rather look at the leaves than bag them, fall foliage in Greater Portland covers where and when they actually turn.
FAQ
Which Greater Portland towns pick up leaves at the curb?
Westbrook is the only one with a fall curbside leaf collection, and it also collects brush at the curb in a separate late October window. Portland runs a curbside leaf program but in 2026 it was spring only and ended May 8. Falmouth, Cumberland, Yarmouth, Freeport, Windham, Scarborough, Cape Elizabeth, Gorham, and South Portland have no fall curbside leaf pickup, though South Portland does one annual collection usually in November.
What are the fall 2026 leaf collection dates?
They have not been published. As of the last week of July 2026, no town in Greater Portland has posted a fall 2026 leaf or brush date. Towns typically set and publish these in September and October. Check the town's own public works page in mid September, and be careful with Windham, where an orphaned 2019 page still ranks in search and shows dates that are seven years old.
Do I need a sticker to use my town's transfer station?
Yes in every town here except Windham's seasonal drop-off site, which publishes no permit requirement. Prices range from $2.00 in Yarmouth to $40.00 for a Cumberland annual pass, with Cape Elizabeth free and South Portland free for the first vehicle. Most towns sell the sticker only at Town Hall, not at the facility, so buy it before you load the car.
Are leaves free to drop off?
Leaves and grass are free for residents in South Portland, Scarborough, Falmouth, Freeport, and Cape Elizabeth once you hold the required sticker or pass. Brush is where the charges start. South Portland charges $5 to $50 for woody material by vehicle size, Cape Elizabeth charges $10 to $30 by vehicle type with automobiles free, and Freeport's posted rate is five cents per pound on a price list dated 2016.
Can I put brush in with my leaves?
No, and this is the most expensive mistake in the whole system. South Portland requires leaves and grass bagged separately from woody items, Scarborough's guidance explicitly says not to mix branches with leaves or grass, Westbrook collects the two streams on different dates with different trucks, and Windham requires separate marked piles. Mixing them converts a free load into a paid one or gets the pile left at the curb.
Where do I take a stump?
Riverside Recycling at 910 Riverside Street in Portland. Falmouth, Cumberland, Freeport, Yarmouth, and Cape Elizabeth all refuse stumps outright, and Freeport and Cape Elizabeth name Riverside as the alternative. Yarmouth will take trees and wood waste larger than twelve inches in diameter at $15 per cubic yard but still draws the line at stumps.
Can renters use Portland's yard waste allowance?
No. Portland's ECard, which covers ten bulky or yard waste items per year on a July to June cycle, is issued to residential property owners only, one card per property even in a multiunit building. Proof of ownership is required. Renters in Portland have no resident allowance and pay the full disposal rate at Riverside.