Worried that No Mow May will turn your garden into an unmanageable mess? Here are some ways that you can embrace the ‘No Mow’ concept while keeping your garden acceptably neat.
No Mow May encourages gardeners to leave their mowers in the shed and transform their lawns into havens of biodiversity. The campaign was started in 2019 by the conservation charity Plantlife, and has been embraced by millions, who share images of their buzzing and beautiful ‘liberated lawns’ on social media. According to Plantlife, 92 per cent of people surveyed by Plantlife last year said they didn’t mow their lawns in May, an increase of 30 per cent.
But not everyone is on board. There’s a distinct cohort of gardeners who will have nothing to do with the concept of No Mow May.
It’s hardly surprising, as mowing is deeply embedded in the UK psyche. As author, podcaster and gardening coach, Andrew Timothy O’Brien, points out in his book To Stand and Stare: “Grass is supposed to be green, and when it isn’t, there’s something wrong. We are trained to be distrustful of grass when it gets long, counselled against letting it grow under our feet and encouraged to view it as a metaphorical wilderness.”
This is clearly borne out on the Gardens Illustrated website – while our feature on No Mow May is our most popular piece of content at this time of year, our article on ride-on mowers is not far behind.
So if you want to help wildlife but are struggling to embrace the concept of No Mow May, here are some ideas you could try.
Don’t stop mowing completely
No Mow May is not necessarily about stopping mowing completely. Behind the attention-grabbing title is a simple concept: to get people to change their habits so that they mow less. Few of us are going to be comfortable with a lawn that merges messily into our borders and looks completely unkempt. Do what you feel comfortable with, and take it from there. Use No Mow May to experiment a little.
If you’re worried about what the neighbours are going to think, Plantlife offer a range of printable posters explaining what you’re doing.
Mow less
If you can’t bring yourself to leave the mower behind for the whole of May, just mow less. Cutting just once a month encourages the maximum number of flowers to grow in your lawn.
Set your mower at a higher height
Ideally, leave around three to five centimetres of grass length every time you mow. Some species, such as daisy and bird’s foot trefoil, are adapted to growing in shorter swards.
Start small
Why not just let a one or two areas of lawn grow longer? Even one square-metre patch of lawn has been shown to produce enough nectar to support almost four honey bees per day.
Start with an area that is out of sight or tricky to mow
Start with an area that is at the end of the garden, under a fruit tree, is out of sight, or that bleeds beyond your garden.
Or give yourself permission to not bother with an area that is fiddly and time-consuming to mow, such as a slope.
Create definition
This is key. Creating sharp, distinct edge between a mowed and un-mowed area can make a huge difference to the look of your garden and signals to others that you are deliberately and consciously managing your lawn in this way.
Garden designer Butter Wakefield has planted wildflower turf in her lawn in her small garden in London, and leaves a margin of unmown grass approximately 200mm wide either side of the meadow to grow long to help insects shelter, feed and grow while they’re young and vulnerable. Either side of that, the lawn is mowed, creating a clear distinction between the meadows and the borders on either side. Letting your lawn grow longer in the middle, with defined areas on either side, could replicate this effect.
Andrew O’Brien admits that even if the grass in his garden is really high, he runs shears along the edges to the beds, creating a clear boundary between border and path. He told us: “There’s a certain degree of smoke and mirrors involved. While long grass and floppy perennials may obfuscate the point at which bed becomes grassy path, for example, the edge is still there. It performs its duty largely unseen, the first few inches kept weed free to allow for the regular passage of a pair of edging shears, slipped surreptitiously in behind the burgeoning lawn.”
Mow paths or routes around the garden
Mowing different routes in long grass instantly gives definition and creates a new way of moving around your garden. Just let the width of your mower dictate the width of your path, and go where the fancy takes you.
Create a spiral
If you you still want to indulge your desire for precision, why not create a lawn spiral, as outlined in landscape designer Marian Boswall’s book, The Sustainable Garden? Marian points out that it increases diversity by creating lots of edges, which is often where the most insect life is found. She advises on starting in the middle, using a stick tied to the mower to guide the spiral.
Rethink what beautiful looks like
RHS Chelsea Flower Show has been big on weeds, which we’re now being encouraged to see as ‘hero’ plants. When is a weed not a wildflower, anyway? We’d be happy to spot wildflowers on a country walk, so why not in our lawn?
Relax
“It’s time for people to relax a little bit,” says Plantlife’s botanist, Trevor Dines. “Avoiding mowing in this way means that instead of a dull monoculture of green concrete, your garden will be thriving and full of interest. I don’t think people realise how diverse our lawns can be.”
Use the time you could have been mowing, strimming and edging to enjoy what nature has created instead. Make a daisy chain, walk barefoot on the swishy grass, or sit in a deckchair see how many insect species and wildflowers you can spot.
If you’re still not convinced, Plantlife’s soundscape from a liberated lawn may convince you…