Following on from our blog series on how we all at Bombus continue our Sustainability Pledge into our personal lives, we take a closer look at one more way we can help the environment!

No Mow May

In our attempts at Bombus to Save the Bees, and Help the Butterflies, one initiative we have taken a huge interest in is the No Mow May project. And now that we are into June, it’s interesting to see how we managed to survive the spring without mowing our lawns and what it’s meant to our local environment.

So what is No Mow May?

No Mow May was started by Plantlife in order to preserve the biodiversity of our environment and help to stop the ever declining population of crucially important insect species.

PlantLife say the following:

"On a single day in summer, one acre of wildflower meadow can contain 3 million flowers and produce 1 kg of nectar sugar for pollinators.

But since the 1930s, we have lost nearly 7.5 million acres of flower-rich meadows and pastures. Just 1% of our countryside now provides this floral feast for pollinators.

Against this loss, habitats such as lawns have become increasingly important. With 15 million gardens in Britain, our lawns have the potential to become major sources of nectar."

Plantlife :: No Mow May: dawn of a new British lawn

It’s an initiative any lazy gardener can relish, leaving our lawns to rewild is a rewarding, easy thing we can do for the environment!

Things like dandelions are so crucial as early food for bees emerging from hibernation.

The more insects there are, the more birds.

There are a thousand reasons to go a little wild in your garden and this initiative sums it up perfectly. Read their full campaign here:

About - No Mow May (plantlife.org.uk)

So how did NO MOW MAY go for me as a member of the Bombus team?

I left my front lawn to go wild for No Mow May. And I can honestly say now, looking at what we achieved, it made a huge difference.

At first, we noticed a massive increase in the number of wildflowers that grew amongst our grass. We were spotting campion, columbine, sorrel, crane’s bill, violets, daisies, and hundreds of cuckoo flowers!

Then came the dandelions. Which personally I think are very underrated. Dancing about in the sun they were positively joyful, and once they went to seed the silvery fluffy balls looked heavenly in the morning mist. The clover came next, and the forget-me-nots were the icing on the cake.

As the month went on, the grass got wilder. It did start to look a little scruffy. But what stopped us from relenting and cutting it back was that for the first time in years we could hear a hum in our garden. There were bees. So many bees! And sat one morning with my coffee in amongst the tall wheat like grass, I counted five different species of butterfly. Our lawn was alive.

We were lucky to have thousands of daffodils and bluebells in our garden too. And this means that we’ve left the areas where they grow to stay wild as long as possible, as well as our lawn. This helps to preserve the flowers for next year, and means we will have just as good a bloom going forward.

So what now for the wildlife?

Because of the noticeable difference in the environment from completing one no mow may, we’ve decided to leave quite a few areas wild throughout our garden. Underneath one particular area we’ve left the grass to grow and it’s now almost at head height!

We did eventually relent once May was through and mowed the centre of our front lawn.

This was for access purposes more than anything, and being able to see the dog when he went out to do his business. But we are encouraging a wilder lawn regardless. We prefer moss and clover to actual grass, and we aren’t cutting it quite so short so that the buttercups and dog violets have a chance to provide food for the bees throughout the summer.

In conclusion, I think the future of our garden is wilder. And certainly to the younger generation, neatly manicured green grass is outdated, unhelpful, and quite frankly a lot of work! There is joy to be found in wildflowers and grasses and insects and birds.

No Mow May has, for us at least, meant No Mow Ever, for many parts of our garden!

How do I know what’s in my lawn?

Something that got us very interested in rewilding our garden was to download an app called Seek. It links to your camera on your phone and can identify plants, flowers, and animals by scanning them and searching its image database.

It’s fantastic! And helps you to answer any questions you have about the flowers you may find in your no mowed lawn.