“No Mow May” started in 2019, although for me it started in maybe 2003? I also have a “No Mow June” and “No Mow July”!

The movement was started by Plantlife in 2019. The basic aim is to not mow your lawn (or at the very least part of it) for the entire month of May. This will allow the wildflowers to bloom, providing valuable nectar for many pollinators and allowing your lawn to become a refuge for all sorts of other vital invertebrates.

These invertebrates in turn feed our much loved garden birds, Hedgehogs, bats etc.

What is not to love about “No Mow May”, you will have pretty flowers to admire, more wildlife in your garden, no petrol to pay for, no noisy lawnmowers going, and you can just relax and enjoy your garden rather than pushing a lawnmower around.

You might think your lawn doesn’t have many wildflowers, however you will be amazed what emerges if spared the blades of the mower. Even the most seemingly uninteresting lawn can commonly have species such as these in the picture below: Yarrow (centre), Buttercups and Speedwells (top middle) Daisies and Red Clover (bottom middle), Mouse-ear (middle row left), Birdsfoot Trefoil (bottom right) etc. Left uncut the common Selfheal (top right) can become as visually attractive as orchids and the humble Dandelion (top left) provides a great splash of early season colour, and more importantly the insects love them.

If like me, you want to extend your “No Mow May” into June and July, you can recreate your own “Mini Hay Meadow”, and you can introduce native, local provenance wild-flower seed, and over time you could have beauties such as Ox-eye Daisy, Meadow Cranesbill and Wild Carrot pictured below.

Introducing Yellow Rattle (far left below) which is parasitic on the grass will reduce the amount of grass you need to cut (when you eventually do cut) and it is important to do a cut before the autumn and remove the cuttings to allow the wildflowers to not get swamped by grass and a thatch to build up. With patience orchids may appear (second left), and beautiful Cowslips (second right) and showy Field Scabious (far right) also.

Yellow Rattle can help your “Mini-meadow” thrive and with luck orchids could eventually appear

This will increase not only the floral diversity of your garden, but the diversity of everything else as many insect species will only visit certain flowers, or their caterpillars can be quite choosy and only nibble certain leaves.   

With 97% of our Wildflower Meadows lost since 1930, it is way we can help to redress the balance, give nature a chance to flourish and also not to have the annoying task of cutting the lawn!