No Mow May: Why you should lock up your lawnmower on 1st May

By Tanya Jackson

Published: Wednesday, 20 April 2022 at 12:00 am

Want to get more bees, butterflies and wildlife buzzing around your garden lawn this summer? Take part in Plantlife’s #NoMowMay campaign, and boost the nectar in your garden. All you have to do is resist the urge to cut the lawn throughout May – and see what springs up in your garden instead.

Campaign research has revealed that mowing your lawn less frequently can provide enough food for ten times the amount of bees, butterflies, moths, beetles and other pollinators. The study also discovered more than 200 species of plants, including rare meadow flowers such as knotted clover, eyebright, snakeshead fritillary and saxifrage, were found flowering within the grasses.

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A male red-tailed bumblebee feeding on a thistle. /Credit: Roger Tidman/Getty Images

What is No Mow May?

No Mow May is a national campaign to encourage people not to mow their lawns until the end of May in order to boost the flowers, and nectar, available to pollinating insects such as bees, butterflies and moths. At the end of the month, participants are invited to record the flowers that have grown in the grass with the Every Flower Counts survey.

Why shouldn’t you cut the grass in May?

There’s no doubt that providing food for pollinators is critical to their survival. We’ve lost 97% of our wildflower meadows in the past 70 years in the UK, and insects are in worrying decline with butterflies down by about 50% since 1976, and 13 species of bee now extinct. A recent study found that rural honey bees have to fly further to find food than their urban counterparts, which suggests that wild flowers are much less abundant than those grown in the gardens of more built-up areas. But why May?

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Grass lawns begin to really take off during May/Credit: Getty

Traditionally, May is the time when the soils are warm enough for grasses to really start shooting up. Most gardeners are keen to get the mower out and transform that scraggly patch of grass into a thriving lawn. In fact, Plantlife’s 2019 survey revealed that most of us cut the grass every two weeks.

How to take part in No Mow May

All you have to do is:

  1. Simply leave your mower in the shed for No Mow May and watch the flowers fill your lawn.
  2. From 23rd May to 31st May, choose a random square metre of your lawn and take part in Every Flower Counts by counting the number of flowers in it.
  3. You’ll instantly receive a “Personal Nectar Score’, which shows how much nectar is being produced by the flowers on your lawn and how many bees it can support.