No Mow May is Bullsh*t - here's why
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- Опубліковано 19 тра 2024
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A true leave curious fan would have a caledonian pine forest with wolves for a garden
And beavers and water volesIn their pond
Yup and a tree house in the middle of it all
Love it! Bring it on (I really hope Scotland can do it with moose and others too!!)
Sounds almost like my place in Norway. 😁
Aye please!!
I just love a wild yard. It's always more interesting than grass.
Well said!
Yep, our back lawn gets cut for the dogs (really bad lawn anyway) but the hedges, front lawn and most of our field (apart from paths) might get cut once a year, I just cut back part of it a few months ago to let regrow and it looks fab, all the cut stuff piled up rotting down and branches hiding bugs, it's great.
I love tall,wild grass. I mow only when I have to because I live in town. They'll fine you eventually.
all the cats around chill with us, because of our wild yard
You people are lucky, those plants are largely native there. Where I am we get the same plants because they were released here >: (
In my area specifically there are almost zero natives in the average yard that arent trees, even the native trees are all babies. They use to get 60+ meters tall but now there arent any that size left.
I found No Mow May a gateway drug to no mow ever!!! After seeing the amount of life that came to the garden I had no heart to mow come June.
Now it's permanently wild, full of oxeye daisies and dandelions, a massive buddleia swarming with butterflies. I doubt most of the neighbours are impressed, but a couple are experimenting with wild patches. Next project, remove the fences and put hedges in.
That sounds so beautiful! Well done!
Yay! So glad to find another NoMowEver!
I haven't mowed in 21 years. The neighbours 'look,' but are wise enough to say nothing.
They continue mowing their empty, lifeless patches - which makes me even more determined to add to my little wilderness.
Currently, I'm creating 'managed thickets.' (Biggish garden, so it's possible to do). I started a couple of years ago by planting a few very small copses of Birch seedlings.
However, I still kept returning to that gardener state of mind - you know what I mean, correct planting distances between trees.
But recently, as I have been visiting a nearby woodland that has pathways cut for the hunting season, I noticed how very close together the young Birches were, and how they positively 'swarm' with life.
The closeness of the Birches have forced them to grow faster and higher, creating a different environment, different flower types occupy ground level, fungi abounds, mosses and algae and birds galore. It's just lovely.
So now I'm filling in the gaps in my own Birch copses. (Or I will continue to do something in Autumn), getting a bit hot here now.
I say these will be 'managed thickets' because I don't want brambles in them. Have enough of those in the hedgerows in my garden as it is. The Birches will be selectively coppiced to maintain this environment at a certain height, as it clearly suits some species that larger trees do not.
No Mow May makes no sense where I live, naturally there isnt much in the way of grassland here so all the grasses and weeds in the lawns are non native or outwrite invasive.
The vast majority of plants in my yard are are non native so No Mow May makes zero sense, its something that only applies to places where the ecology fits. All them daisies, dandelions, and buttercups that are symbols of nature's beauty in one place are nothing but unnatural invaders in others. Where I live its suppose to be forests of trees 30 to 60 meters tall or even more. The native plants here that would normally grow in the open areas like lawns are outcompeted by the invaders to such an extreme that mowing or not mowing isnt the issue.
I wish I could get my HOA onboard with this plan...
I've been trying to convince the other half that this is the way to go!
Someone living nearby has a very small garden in front of their house. There's a sign which reads "This is not a messy garden, this is a luxurious hotel for insects". I completely love love it. Luckily many people here in Germany are more aware of this issue (also due to "save the bees" campaigns) and at least leave wildflower isles in their lawns and meadows when they mow it.
I live in berlin and many parks here have earas were there no longer mow
I'm stealing that
There is a 3 hectare area in Moscow called "Cherished Meadow". It's a small grassland that was apparently meant to be turned into a lawn with side walks made of concrete but people who lived there opposed the idea. Over 500 species of plants and animals (mostly insects) were recorded here and roughly 20 of them are regionally rare. Now the area is officially protected and grass can be only mowed once a year in August or September.
I wish more cities did this
I really feel like we need a concentrated campaign in the UK to divest 'neat and tidy' aka 'highly controlled' from 'good'. We need now more than ever to learn how to embrace a little bit of chaos on an ecological level. Thank you so much for an excellent video as always!!
We certainly do!!!
Our gardens add up to such an amazing amount of acreage, perhaps this is where our governments should be focusing their attention when it comes to rewilding - and not upsetting the farmers so much.
We do need an agricultural revolution, I'm not saying we don't. But we also need to be 'food secure' in a world with a rapidly changing climate, and where more nations are rapidly becoming less productive. We cannot continue to turn over too much land from agriculture to rewilding 'unless' that land is exhausted (rather a lot of agricultural land is reaching that point, artificial chemical additives failing to keep soil depths suitably deep).
I would say that some effort should be made to replant orchards, supermarkets encouraged to pay farmers fairly and diversify on fruit varieties (apple hybrids, bullaces, damsons, greengages, peaches grown here instead of abroad - if I can grow peaches in Scotland, then they can in England). Then the ground beneath the trees can be planted with wild flowers, beehives installed, and that's 2 crops in one.
At least in the UK you appreciate “cottage gardens” which, by some Americans’ standards, is unkempt. I have “cottage-style” gardens using increasingly more native plants and nature loves it. I’m in Atlanta, GA, southeastern USA.
Councils should take the initiative. And Housing Associations should ditch the clause to keep front lawns short.
Yeah agreed!
In Glasgow and the surrounding council areas, it is not uncommon to see signs on patches of grass that say just that! 'This area is left to grow to encourage biodiversity in the area.' The parks by me have areas where the grass is deliberately not mowed for much longer than just one month.
Honestly, as an uninformed cynic, i do see some of those areas and think, oh how convenient, an excuse from the council to save money on upkeep. Mostly because I feel like i am more likely to see those areas in more deprived parts of the city. But of course, more biodiversity is a great thing for councils to be striving for and educating residents about.
No, the government needs to fuck-off out of our lives.
Don't tread on me.
@@orangew3988Good to know Glasgow is doing this. We have some wild spaces here in Dumfries town too, and I'm hoping the council continue to leave them be.
@@mashpotaetoif you object to communities collectively deciding they would prefer diverse meadows to monoculture lawns, I think your gripe may be with society itself rather than the government. Or you’re completely reactionary and didn’t think past the mention of “councils.”
Joel inspired me to rip up a 3x3 corner of slabs in my garden, which has become a wildflower lawn. Plan on leaving it until October. Already noticed more bird and moths in my garden specifically.
Lovely! Joel is full of knowledge!
Thanks ever so much for this, so glad you'll be leaving it until October - you will be rewarded for doing less, I promise!
I'm from the central US, and I heard people on the internet promote "native no-mow lawns". By using short native grasses, sedges, and forbs to rewild their tame lawns. Species like buffalo grass, blue-eyed grass (technically an iris), and heath aster, to name a few.
(technically a sissyrinchium) sorry couldn't resist!
@robinbennett3531 That's fine. I just wanted to clarify that it's not a grass despite the name.
From WI and am slowly turning our yard into native garden! Rewarding watching it grow each year.
Lots of places here in Glasgow have been getting cut only once a year with lots of plants, shrubs and trees planted too. Starting to really see a difference 4 years on, it's fantastic!
I live on 2 acres in central Canada with my parents and over the past couple years I've discovered your channel and been inspired to rewild. I used to view it as a fruitless endeavor if I didn't have the means to introduce ecosystem engineers like bison or beavers but now I realize the beauty in the little things. I've taken over control of a little quarter acre in the back of our property, removing invasives and even doing a few prescribed burns! It's been great seeing native species return and seeing animal sign like rabbits, mule deer and coyotes. I'm always excited to go walking back there and seeing what new creatures and plant life make a return to the area. Thanks for all you do Rob!
🇨🇦🇨🇦
There's a great long expanse of grass out the back of my block of flats. About eight metres deep and 100 metres wide. Back in March it was beginning to thrive, with flowers coming out in force... but a local council worker with his big diesel guzzling sit down mowing machine came along and cut it all down. It had recovered about 75% by last week, so they mowed it down again. Nobody uses this patch of land. It could so easily be allowed to grow all year and as you suggest, get cut back once at the end of the summer. But old habits die hard, sadly.
This is exactly the kind of thing we have to stop. Just doesn’t make sense
That's a perfect example; flowers will not only benefit nature but cheer up the locals. Wasting that worker's time to make a noise and pollute the air gets rid of something pleasant, just to look tidy. One may as well tarmac it over and make it thoroughly lifeless and soulless.
It's exactly the same where i live:( at some point they mowed it down so frequently during the hot months that the grass just died because it could not keep up. I e-mailed the city council and all they replied was: "We have to keep the grass at lawn height according to the policy, we are obligated to follow this policy." Change the damn policy ffs
Have you written to a local councillor? Don't get what you don't ask for, they always want to save money and look like they're doing good
Suggest it to the council. Are there any like-minded people living in your tower? Perhaps some of you could get together to help sponsor the planting of a few trees or to keep it clean with some voluntary litter picking.
Maybe the council just needs to know what the people in the tower expect of them if you want it rewilded.
An 8 x 100 metre strip of land is a good sized area and an opportunity not to be missed (plus the council would love to think they can reduce the need for maintenance if residents are prepared to help them out. Maintenance is very expensive, even for your area. But what they don't want is promises, residents then letting it become a flytip area.
You need to make a few plans - a copse of Birch in one spot, a copse of hazel in another, some Bluebells, Snowdrops, a few Pink Champion, and then add the occasional one off like Lungwort and Cowslip. If residents are willing to prove it's workable, the council will agree to your request.
(I was in the starting phase with a large area of ground in my former residence. However, the council took a long time, and I moved, but I did get things started with regard to meetings, grants, and a plan.
That's what you need - collaborators and a plan.
Right now its been raining so much people haven't been able mow and Ive enjoyed it so much. Sadly the second there is sun people are out. The buttercups that were in abundance yesturday are gone this morning. Sadly my landlord just wanted lawn and hedge with everything else drown in weed killer. The neighbor is just as bad. He's obsessive with it and will happily go out and "see to" the land behind his property, and it just breaks my heart. I really hope no mow summer takes off.
can i bite your slumlord
I agree 100% 👍 In fact I am doing it myself. I'm from the Netherlands and I had no idea that no mo May was a thing. Purely coincidentally I purposely stopped mowing a part of my tiny lawn just because I was curious to see what would happen, and I have a lot of dandy lions so I thought that if I would let the grass grow tall that it might reduce the spread of the dandy lions a bit. But on top of that I have been spreading small twigs and wood chips and leaves in my plant borders, mimicking a forest floor, and I planted flower bulbs and I did seed a lot of flower seeds. Now I see tons of woodlice and insects, and the soil stays moist because of the mulch cover. I had some mushrooms popping up. And yesterday I even noticed a hedgehog wandering through my garden looking for a tasty meal. And a variety of birds come visit my tiny garden looking for a meal and to take a bath.
My garden is only 10 by 10 meter, but even in a small garden it is possible to get a lot of bio diversity and to attract all sorts of insects and birds if you start caring for the soil and the insects and the micro organisms that live in the soil.
My motto is, if you learn about the micro organisms, and when you shift your focus on caring for the micro organisms in your garden soil, then everything else that grows above the ground will grow well too. It all starts with how healthy your soil is for the micro organisms.
Thanks for this video it’s really nice and helps you to get into a good thought process for mowing.
I’m part of a community garden project and it’s kinda fallen on me to mow the banks by the road side and when I’m doing it I wonder
“Why am I mowing this? why shouldn’t it be long?” and yeah people in the community complain if it isn’t mowed short and cut down, but I’ll try just making paths and patterns through the grass rather than cutting it completely, then it’ll look maintained and tidy while still having a fair amount of green for nature to enjoy
You’re welcome and yes I think it’s about having conversations or sometimes trying it and then talking about why you did it - sometimes people have to see something to understand why it makes sense!
I find most people don’t mind these areas being long when they’re green and full of wildflowers, they get annoyed once it turns yellow and goes to seed, because then it does look very unkempt and as if no one cares about how scruffy the area looks. I think the answer is to have little signs posted explaining why it’s not being cut in the growing season, but then getting the timing right by cutting it before it becomes an eyesore. I think this would keep most people happy because it’s a nice balance. Unfortunately I cannot see this ever happening. 🙁
defintely leave most of it growing, but try to keep it looking tidy by mowing a small strip along walkways, etc. this way the long grass wont hang into where people want to go. Also mowing winding paths and isles as suggested in the video entices people to actually get into the meadow, take a look, experience nature. Also sings help, make them pretty and educate people about the habitat you're creating. It's always a process, but somebody has to start and you're already on your way! :)
i havent owned a mower for years i let my garden go wild and bought a coupleof trees from the woodland trust. i think my garden looks great and hopefully so do the insects and birds.
Same here. I stopped using my mower 21 years ago. In fact, I never used it when I moved to this property, as I did the usual thing of wanting to see what little treasures would appear in this garden, and I was just so entertained by the myriad of tiny frogs that would leap out before my feet - well, I didn't have the heart to mow. It would be sheer murder to do so
Thanks for the video. I'd never heard of No Mow May, but we haven't mowed yet. Decades of low maintenance, no watering, and no chemical use has produced a slow growing drought resistant lawn in which I've identified 39 non-grass flowering plants (and many grass and sedge species, even some liverworts in a damp shady spot). We pretty much never mow more than once a month, and we cut around areas in bloom- there are so many plant communities. In the last 15 years I've watched a patch of Ajuga migrate across the side yard, and seen new plants move in and start communities- even started a few. Nothing dominates. There's so much life, insects going about their business everywhere. I spend hours taking photos of the plants and insects in the lawn and gardens. It's a joy to me. I wish there was some easy way for 'regular' lawns to be like this one, it's a long road started before I moved in.
That's the interesting thing I've discovered about leaving the garden be, nothing do.inates - at least, not for long.
The 2nd year I left the lawn, there was an immense amount of Trefoil, but that's patchier these days.
I took have Ajuga. Strangely, the flower spikes are short in the Ajuga that grows in the grass. But the one that's overtaking a gravel path has really long spikes of flowers. Very impressive and I carefully navigate through it so not to spoil the beauty.
@@Debbie-henri Awesome!
The easy way to make regular lawns like this is to stop chopping them down. It really could hardly be easier.
I do not like chopping lawns because it is so hard. And to think that is actually the way to let ecosystems happen! What a life where we really are needlessly chasing after royalty status symbols.
How many uninformed people comment whilst mowing their immaculate lawns "hmm, I wonder why we see less birds nowadays". "We don't see as many butterflies and bumblebees as we used to". "Loss of wildlife must be due to mobile phones or something".
I'm a Ecologist, having a garden is such a lovely little experiment, the gardens are tiny but I'm trying to do the most with them, in the front I've laid wildflower turf to see how it does (well so far), built a dry stone wall which is full of insects, dug a small wildlife pond as well, also managed to fit in some planters for veg growing, the side we've dug over and put on a slight slope as I found when digging over the front garden we had loads of mining bees , many have moved into their new home down the side of the house which I'm super happy about, the back has been left to see what takes have and it has loads of native species some desirable and some not (looking at you bind weed), I love the chaos and leave any cutting till the end of summer, whilst its not all natural I think the balance is the best way to go , I only weed to ensure things like the bind weed don't take over but other than that its low maintenance and I love it ❤
Great vid as ever I try to convince so many to allow their gardens to grow not just in May, looking forward to the day the public accept chaos 😅
Some really great ideas here, thanks for sharing, inspired to put them into action in my garden too🙂
@@valsearle3702 Glad to hear, there's lots of resources online on how to improve your garden for wildlife, the wildlife trusts, RSPB, the woodland trust etc :)
Rather than one full cut per year I like to do some patches one month and some another; that way what ever time of the year a flower blooms there's at least one patch that'll set seed.
It's what I do in my garden, and I hope it also means that the creatures that live in the long grass can relocate to the unmown sections 😊
@@BarracudaB68 probably won't have time if you have a petrol/electric mower. ONly if you cut by hand...
I have the mower just raise up the blades, so Long as the lawn is under a foot my city doesn't care. I get a lot of flowers.
How does ur city get to say what you do with your land
@@GorkhorMusic its so we don't get as much ticks that carry lyme disease, they allow wildflower gardens, they just don't want it where people/animals walk through. I live in the Appalachian area so we get alot of deer.
I see huge mowed lawns everywhere. They are nauseating, wasteful, and destructive.
Haven't finished the video yet but what a great thumbnail!! 😆
Edit: had these same thoughts when I asked my landlord to not mow this summer. They asked for how long, and in the back of my head, 'No Mow May' was all I remembered hearing. But it seemed stupid to me for them to come back in June and just decimate all the plants we would let grow in May! So instead I just said September. We've now got lots of long grass, daisies, buttercups, and even a few bluebells still hanging on. Bees and hoverflies and countless other inverts I can't identify buzzing about our tiny little patch of grass. So glad they won't be coming back in 10 days to decimate it all!
I pretty much did a no mow 2023 (I hate cutting grass so it was very easy 😁) and the grass flowers were beautiful waving in the breeze. I now just cut in stages so I always have wild patches
We have two small kids and live in the city. Fortunately for us, we do have a balcony. So we have room for plants to help a few insects.
We are looking for a house with a garden, and the dream is a fenced off area where everything is just left alone. A few flower seeds to start some growth, and then see what happens. I would love to make a kind of science project out of it. Hoping to find that garden space one day!
make sure you have neighbors that mind their own business because they get resentful when someone is doing good and they dont. instead of being a better person they scheme and complain until theyve violated your rights and found someone to remind you you dont have any rights and your ability to think your free is revoked for the moment while youre reminded this is not a free country because youre about to be threatened and forced to mow your lawn. because your making all the selfcentered people look bad.
Lived for a couple of years in a home with a small garden. Planted white clover, wildflowers, a lot of trees and hedges, and just let everything go wild. It was so full of life.
Now we're living in a flat, and we're making the most out of the balcony. More than half of it is filled with plants and flowers. We already have a lot of birds coming to the feeders. It would be amazing if more would do this!
I think the way go go is mowing part of the lawn, like the area you wanna have a seating group, grill or sunbed, or paths to gates or sheds, but leaving the other areas where you wont actually walk unmowed.
Question is ,who is the garden for , humans or non humans ? Mine is densely planted with trees so that insect life is available on trees for birds to eat even though I mow the lawn occasionally. We don't all have the Masai Mara in our back yard to play with.
True, we do the same. I think of it as a micro nature reserve and it’s noticeably more alive than the neighbours gardens. If our side of the street did something similar, or our suburb, heck the whole darn city…? Wolverhampton Garden City sounds tremendously unlikely, but who knows, if we can change the mindset of ‘That needs tidying up’, we’re not likely to have Gazelle and Wilderbeest but it sure would be impressive!
As a fellow Wolverhampton resident, a garden city wouldn't be a bad use of the empty space 😆
So many people need to be educated on the damage they are really doing by keeping the grass short all year round that "No Mow May" is a really important piece of education to show people what is possible.
We used to have a town council, where I live, that kept a band of grass un-mowed, but that seems to have been "forgotten" again.
My neighbour keeps his lawn short like a tennis-court all year (even in winter).
My garden has a "No Mow May" sign on it to get people (including my neighbour) thinking. I don't expect him to change any time soon, but at least I tried.
Once you start to realize how nature functions and how everything lives, you start to like the look of the “wildness”. After I have realized this, I think lawns are kind of ugly now.
Eastern US here.
I am slowly trying to turn my front yard into a short growth "lawn" (with patches of lavenders and green herbs of a bushlike habit for interest) and get rid of all the medium to tall invasive grasses and the towering 9 foot rudbeckia!
What you said about having a no mow May then cutting on 1st June is like building a house, letting people move in, then taking a wrecking ball to it. really resonated with me. I have a part of my garden that I only mow about once a year, and I hate doing it then because I think every alteration I make to my gardens means I'm destroying a creature's home. It's left so untouched I have 3 ant hills, and there's no way I'm flattening them just to have a nice lawn. I'm thinking of making some signs for them and making a feature 😁
Thank you for being a voice on this matter.
I agree totally. I think that lawns can be a symptom of many things; blind conformity (no-one wants to question the status quo or stand out), lack of imagination (the belief that things can be better), cultural conditioning (beauty = tidiness), distrust of and disconnection from nature (I have to control it otherwise it will take over), appreciation for superficial beauty (it's green and grows but what good is it), and wastefulness.
I also agree that many people don't even know what they're missing; they don't even realise that they would benefit from green spaces, until a grass verge is spilling over with buttercups and daisies. I think that some people attribute negative things to overgrown lawns; notions of neglect or the council hoarding taxpayers money. It's an ideological mess, but ultimately for me the change came from simply reconnecting with nature, feeling restless at being unable to control what happens to it, and realising that I could help by starting at home.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, to an extent. Objectively I think we need to relearn that beauty is more than just a pretty surface, but about what that surface beauty means. Flowers, for example, make us happy to look at because they are aesthetically beautiful, but in truth the deepest source of their beauty lies in what those flowers mean; they mean a healthy insect population, interconnected, intraspecies relationships, threads on a larger tapestry. If you have plastic or non native flowers that don't attract any pollinators, suddenly their beauty only lasts so long when you look at them. A truly beautiful flower is one still nodding after a bee has bounced off it, its individual aesthetic suddenly so much more than mere prettiness, but a part of a larger, flourishing whole.
Personally I have central wildflower patches, and I have never been happier with my garden, seeing all the species mingle and merge seamlessly into one single, wondrous ecosystem so much greater than the sum of its parts.
What a truly lovely comment, a pleasure to read.
A few more minutes of this writing style, some appropriate video footage, and you have a piece worthy of a UA-cam video in its own right.
Yes to all of that! The flowers that attract the insects are the only truly beautiful flowers to me. One of my favourite plants is the Dandelion, and on the only patch of tidy grass I will mow around them (and dead head them to encourage more blooms). The plan is to turn my lawns into more wildlife-friendly habitat because I find that far more pleasurable that a conventional tidy garden with a pristine lawn.
Thank you. You have convinced me to stop mowing my lawn once a week. Instead I will now mow it every 3 days and heavily water it on the 4th, throwing down 1lb of Nitrogen per 1,000 ft to ensure the maximum sward health.
😂
Inspiring! When I get my own garden I will not now the lawn for 3-4 months
I have a really small garden, just something like 100 m² and located in the middle of a densely packed settlement, but I created it to be a diverse space with (mostly) native flowers and bushes for animal cover. It is quite literally buzzing with life. Also I am feeding the birds all year, which means that it has become a local meeting place for a variety of bird species, With breeding pairs of tits and blackbirds. Also, a few weeks ago a hedgehog set up camp and is now happily sharing my terrace with me.
While it still obviously can't compare to undisturbed nature, it is still quite a haven, and while quite a lot of planning went into selecting plants, it is now almost no maintenance. Especially since I'm doing an "only very selective cut-back" summer for a while now. (Technically I need to have 50+% grassy area on my grounds by regulation, but that rule is written in a way that interpreting it as a wildflower meadow is well within my right.)
The only things worse than having huge green swards every place one looks are golf courses leaching toxic chemicals into waterways poisoning every thing it touches. Thanks, Rob, for all you and your colleagues are doing to make us aware of just how much each and every one of us CAN contribute to growing a healthier environment for our selves and the entire family of man.
Living with a tidy gardener is a challenge, but random cut pathways is the way to go, a small hint of formality through a wilder lawn.
Agree completely! If people are using their lawn for something, great! If not, its better to start moving towards native-plant garden beds if you really want to help wildlife
We've got like a little meadow with fruit trees at the back of our garden, we also have bees there and let our ducks and chickens wander there often. So we just mow a few paths through and it's really wonderful to go through the nearly meter high flowers, buzzing with all the insects. We don't even need to reseed it, as all the flowers get to be pollinated and their seeds developed and spread there again.
Totally agree Rob. It is a bare minimum. Unfortunately my husband loves his mower but I have a rich garden full of various plants for nature so hopefully the mowed lawn is not too awful. 😢
The local council has just mowed the edge of the verges near me and cut down loads of marsh orchids.
I am really excited to see your small-scale rewilding videos.
Yes they’re coming :)
Never heard of No Mow May before this video. I think this is an interesting and very important video. Thank you for all that you do! We never mow, no matter what month. We live in a cottage in the forest so never had a lawn to begin with. We just cleared some space to grow food and flowers and the rest of our land is free to grow as it likes and there is a lot of plants and wildlife there. It is a dry place where we live (it is an island in the Baltic Sea) because of how the land has been mistreated and how the authorities forced farmers to "dry out" wetlands in the past. We also have mass tourism that is very bad for our island. We fight tourism and summerhouse owners destroying nature. They are so many in the summer that we do not have water enough on the island. If you like I think it would be very interesting to learn more about what mass tourism and summerhouse owners do to an area...what can one do to change these things? How can one make people aware and open their eyes to more than money?
Sounds like you have a nice setup and tourists will always come to nice areas & sometimes the damage can be severe and usually complex. Keep doing what you’re doing to safeguard your patch of nature!
2020, when the Council were not strimming and spraying all summer, was the discovery for me of wild flowers, plant lore and the love of foraging. Why cant the Council be encouraged to plant more fruit trees, bushes, nut trees? Food security. Making soil better organically. People learn the truth about weed killers and glyphosphates seeping into our water systems? Why are not communities getting this and working together to take back control from huge greedy corporations? We need a radical shift in thinking.
I’m in the southeastern USA and experimenting with “kill your lawn” this year. Your suggestion about mowing pathway is brilliant. It makes for an interesting stroll as nature emerges and expands in the sections not mowed while showing that the are is manage, enough to satisfy the “mow that lawn” crowd and homeowner associations. Thanks for what you do and keep up the good work 👍🏽
Totally agree with you! If everyone thought of this nature would really benefit. There are so many gardens and parks! In the town i live in in The Netherlands they also don’t mow certain grassy areas. The wild flowers are amazing. The council put up signs explaining what was going on so it was clear for everyone. Great idea!
We do a similar thing in Scotland with the wild patches of grass! When I visited Amsterdam I just loved how green the city was.
Definitely a no-mow summer. The real problem is bourgeois expectations. My friend has been given such a hard time about not "maintaining" her front garden and grass verge that she's gone back to cutting them. The local council saves money by using bloody Roundup to "tidy up" the weed, which dare to encroach on the roads or (rare) footpaths; and the grass is cut down so low that the soil shows through. It looks horrible!
I think it’s a bite sized amount of rewilding - something that can be really overwhelming when you’ve just started thinking differently about the landscape.
Mown trails in meadow lawns are absolutely the way but too much too fast could convince the uninitiated against rewilding by covering up the things they understand with those things that they may not just yet.
Just like how forests must succeed over time, our collective mindset must also be colonized and succeed at a healthy, sustainable pace - often A LOT slower than we’d like.
Re wilding has no lawns as they are kept that way by domestication .on the other hand a meadow is a managed area of grass that is mowed ,if it is not mowed it is not a meadow .
In principle, yes, no-mow-summer makes more sense, but maybe the best idea is to create a gentler path to there. One way might be to add "Half Mow June" to the list of "mow cycles". Make neat stripes through the meadow. Make wavy stripes?
And then there's Quarter Mow July, where you crisscross that if you still need to mow (leaving blocks of "secondary growth" among the primary forest you now have). Each time you do this, you're not just knocking something flat, you're also choosing to let a little bit live. It's a bit more like a project to Be Your Own Cow, that way. (One problem with no-mow in isolation is that you don't have a lot of herbivores in town if you don't keep some miniature horses.)
There might be a mowing pattern that's more beneficial than flat mowing _and_ no-mowing? Just a thought. (I think if one is to err, the correct error would still be to let the meadow run wild, and start reverting to forest, too.)
I just cut out my front lawn and I'm so excited to turn it into a native water-wise garden! No-mow-ever!
Such good perspective and really effective to offer up the options for being part of it and able to use it still, like the path or sitting area.
My parents have a big garden, but they love it perfectly mowed, demossed, and sprayed with pesticides that are banned in the EU. The thing is, hedgehogs and butterflies really really struggle in our area to the point of basically disappearing from it for years at a time. But I struggle to communicate that there is a middle ground where you can enjoy your lawn and garden and use this important platform to help nature.
We are so programmed (by our parents mainly) that we should have super close cut grass (or artificial turf .. disgusting) , super trimmed hedges and no wildlife flowers or shrubs.
My garden is front - meadow, pond & native hedges
back garden - short grass (for dog and family) with native hedges, shrubs, planted posts and 3 wild areas that are just allowed to grow
The meadow, native hedges and meadows have the most life and the most pretty flowers.
Here in rural Ontario we need to keep a buffer zone around the house and veggie garden to keep the ticks at bay.
Lyme and the other diseases they carry are NO JOKE!
However, I have 67 other acres that are left wild but for bushogged trails and the wildlife is flourishing.
I am also planting a food forest of native plants and trees.
people have to stop saying tics and its for the kids and pets. no its not. thats excuse. tics have natural predators.
35 years ago there was no nut, glutten, and other stupid allergies. you know why they are now? and the rise of asthma? insecure controllng nerotic parents, mothers. they denied their children a childhood and did nothing that a healthy child does that builds their immune system and so with a damaged body and brain of fk up ideals that generation gave birth to another bunch of kids that theyll also condition and handicap. when you over protect children and treat pets as children(dressing them up, talking to them in an eggagerated way(these seem to go hand in hand) Just back off and let kids grow theyll have more success the less influence you have and take clothes off animals and get a therapist. just because they sell animal clothes doesnt mean you should use them, or that could have crackheads saying well if you didnt make it..... and you would say to their logic? its the same with yours.
I am mowing, but I have areas left wild as well as flowerbeds that are abundant. I am developing a hedgerow also. The main reason I am mowing is to stop the grass seed spreading grass as I have a lot of invasive grasses in my lawn. If it was just clumping types, I wouldn’t bother so much. I don’t have a lot of diversity yet in the lawn itself, I do grow some wild flowers in the flower beds. I am trying to keep things balanced without over managing 😊
I appreciate this more than you know.
I'd like to know why the hell the United States thinks we should have government mandated lawns -- in FLORIDA no less! Where we're ticketed when our "lawns" aren't golf-course maintained. I watch people try to put sod on top of sand (!!) and their grass is almost immediately taken over by "weeds." While I admit half of these are invasives, the other half of these weeds are natives that are beautiful if allowed to mature, while requiring absolutely no maintenance.
Where I live, most people don't realize what they're mowing down are tiny sprouting live oaks which are just waiting to burst out of the ground and form a dense canopy. A lot of people think they're either some form of rosemary, or foreign knotweed. Yet, everyone complains about how much hotter it's getting and cranks up the a/c instead. Not only would a canopy shade your home and chop up damaging storm winds into more manageable bursts, but the oaks themselves would aspirate so much throughout the day and cool the surrounding air several degrees.
People complain about how the trees bring back bugs (mostly beneficial). When a tree is cut down people can't seem to connect the dots when accosted by all kinds of scary, home-invading critters. They've all lost their homes and are frantically seeking safe shelter -- in which they are met with bug spray and vermin traps. I get that they don't want wildlife inside their homes, but the wilderness is not permitted to live outside either? People won't be happy until they live in their own well-maintained terrariums. So why not put the humans in their tanks and let the environment go free? Because *that* would be ridiculous, right?
As if we don't have enough currently to be embarrassed about as a nation. This kind of backwards thinking is not helpful.
im copying and printing this and sending to the city my landlord and all my neighbors
Before getting into ecology and conservation I had a gardening and landscaping business - I used to enjoy doing myself out of business by convincing homeowners they just need me to strim paths through the grass. Many really come round to the idea and begun to appreciate just how much life could be in their gardens.
love the video and completely agree...I have a large garden and am experimenting with different ways to manage it better for nature. I have mowed my lawn very little as the kids use it enough for it to not grow quick! I am now only mowing areas in the middle and it still looks great.
As soon as the nitrogen fixing dandelion appears I stop mowing, and don't start again until the clover has stopped flowering (for the local bee populations 😎
I only found out about this no-mow may just the other day, there's a picnic area at the back end of the building where I work which is all overgrown and I just thought it had been neglected for some time until I mentioned it to my boss and he told me what it was!😄😄😄
I live in Carrickfergus Co Antrim & my council didn’t cut municipal areas until end of May. Even housing estates instantly looked like they were part of the countryside. Everywhere you drove it looked wild & personally I thought it looked tons better than shaved grass. I have a small front garden consisting only of grass & I still haven’t cut it & don’t intend to. It used to be a boring bit of grass more trouble than it’s worth. Now it’s blowing in the wind & looks alive. It just makes me feel better.
Imagine the money councils would save not cutting the grass.
My father keeps a wild garden with a patch of cut grass to play with the granddchildren and what not. It is a fairly large garden, in an urban area. He has a walnut, several cherry and apple trees, gooseberries, red berries, raspberries, brambles strawberries. And lots of other plants and shrubbery. Quite a few thorny ones to. A wall is covered by firethorn. There hasn't been a year without birds nests and lots of different insects. Ok, it's not all native species, but it's pretty good.
As much as I'd like to leave the yard wild (my lawn turns into a gorgeous carpet of white violets, purpke violets, purple creeping Charlie ivy, and dandelions) I can't get away with not mowing. I can go for about 2 weeks to enjoy the flowers, but in my town, you can be fined severely for not mowing your lawn properly. Ticks and chiggers are also something that really has to be considered.
Wow, being fined for not mowing properly? What is the reason for that, that sounds absurd.
@@CharlieBuckingham-dg2xv its the usa. the country of conditioned people that believe they are free. until they try to make a personal call on a small piece of grass area. i will get fined and evicted. so im putting a sign out tomorrow that says next may is no mow may or until autumn. because thats whats best for nature.
Me and my wife love nature, and would happily have our garden as a meadow.
Unfortunately due to pressure from our neighbours and the risk of eviction if we don't keep the garden neat we have been forced to cut.
I wanted to leave a wildflower patch, but my neighbour has ocd and apparently it HAS to be a grass desert. :/
fk your neighbor. i just went through the same thing. im trying to find a way to change this and the power an anal neighbor has that nature doesnt.
Great video, short, to the point and informative. My partner and I recently bought our first house and we're leaning towards having one of the gardens unmown at all to allow it to develop naturally and the other we'll keep more orderly. We're lucky to have a good size front and back garden and we want to give some of it back to nature!
i love this video! thanks so much for consistently reiterating that it's about finding whatever you can do with what you have. Here in California, the summer often equals dangerous wildfires, so keeping the dry grass down is a safety issue. That being said, there's been a huge push locally in starting succulent gardens or focusing on bringing back native, water-retaining plants and it's amazing to watch how much insect life these types of set-ups will generate. The whole world has such amazing bio-diversity that there's literally a way for anyone to get involved, no matter where they live. Love your channel and your constant devotion to the flora and fauna of our world!
It's lovely to see native wildflowers appearing! I try to make little nature highways thru my garden. Just mowing paths makes it look super cute 😄
Local park is overgrown. Looks great.
Didn’t see any drug addicts lying in the grass.
I left my back yard patch to grow wild and the neighbors asked if they could clean it up for me 🙄
I love the idea of small scale rewilding! as amazing as the big projects are, I can't build a bison habitat in my garden, but I am planning to add a mini pond of some description, and add more plants :D
Have you heard of the two minute beach clean? It's a really manageable idea- every time you go for a wander on the beach you spend the last 2 mins picking up stuff- yes it's not the same level of cleaning you'd get if volunteers spent a whole day there, but if a few people pick up some of the high tide litter every day or so it helps (and it's a lot more enticing to pick up a few bits and pieces every time over the year than spend a morning picking individual Styrofoam balls out from seaweed)
In Ontario, Canada, we're starting to have a tick problem .... climate change has them coming up from the US and surviving our winter ... many carry lime disease and ... they love long grass. For safety reasons, many of us mow to keep children & pets safe. No mow May has started here as well and some people let their lawn go wild.
yeh i also think though if you have the space it's not hard to have a maintained area for people, and have verges or cut off areas that you leave to grow, with the right diversity the ticks will be kept in check by natural predators who will eventualy follow the ticks due to climate change, but not if the habitat isn't right for them to breed and so on. Also depending on your climate, there are much better plants to have as a lawn than plain old grass, that naturally don't grow long, and still allow for some smaller flowers, like clover for example, it makes for a great grass alternative and the bees also love it and you never need to mow it! also doesn't tear up as easy from dogs and kids running all over it, and i THINK is just much easier to maintain and doesn't get all those browning dead patches (again i imagine this depends on the environment, i only know about clover being a great alternative in the uk, not sure about ontario canada. But i'm sure clover can't be the only good alternative)
Nope thats just an excuse. if people stopped being selfcentered youd realize things eat tics but if everyone is too self absorbed and kill off every living space for other life then things are off balance. like when all the selfish and greed driven farmers poisoned (cowards) all the predators so that they didnt eat their sheep (records prove 5 average of hundreds) and you did steal their and their prays natural habitat and then the hunters and its not for food, pompous game killed the predators because theyre compition? yea, what horrible humans and ignorant the worse they are the stronger the belief rather delusion that theyre better than everyone else and true to form they try to act like everyone is a fool and that theyll believe i choose not to do the right thing for the children, for the poor the homeless, the handicap the old.
theres tics short or long grass but you leave it anyways because theyll get eaten and the kids and pets will be as always. you act like kids and pets are like adults and stay on the short grass. they go to spots much more dangerous, yes they do, you dont have eyes constantly, reality says youre making an excuse. and coming with another as you read this.
Instead of using a mower or a strimmer use a scythe.
i mow the grass in my back garden because i use my back garden.
I leave the edges by the trees wild all year, and i leave my front garden unmown for may specifically because of how many wildflowers are there, but theres also a dedicated flower bed there too for the rest of the year.
Thank you for the acknowledgement here, someone just pointed me to this video and I'm very grateful - I've been saying about the detriment of #NoMowMay for circa 4 years now, and more misinformation and ambiguity on social media a few weeks ago made me do the ad-hoc video during a lunchbreak! But it's had such a good response, we have been trying to get Plantlife's attention for 4 years via Twitter/X and other means but it was only last year that they started speaking of different height lawns etc and this year have engaged some influencers to try to get this message across. My channel has been around for circa 4 years now and we have a great community there, all doing their bit for wildlife when gardening. Just glad the video reached you too though and inspired this, it will certainly help the message of #mowsaics and #nomowsummer spread - again I really appreciate it. Best wishes, Joel
yep for sure, keep up the good work Joel!!
I haven't had to mow, no rain since last December! Las Cruces, NM, USA....it is the High Desert and I adore a lawn versus the dirt, especially given the Winds! :) Tumbleweeds and Mustard is what I have to contend with, but occasionally some fleabane will grow on its own! I have to water almost daily if I want things to grow!
Flower meadows are better than lawns. The flowers only add beauty and it helps pollinating insects which is important. I also think most people would actually be happier if they had more contact with nature, the natural beauty can lift up your mood and bring harmony
The longer you don't mow your lawn, the sooner you have a forest.
In an expat Brit in Massachusetts where the sterile chemical lawn also reigns supreme, but one of the things that has caught on to some extent across USA is "hellstrip" gardening on the grass verge outside houses alongside the stretch of sidewalk (UK: pavement). This is a tough space for survival, subject as it is to winter road salt and automotive emissions and chemicals. Some towns/cities have regulations for a resident planting in this space, others mostly turn a blind eye. This is a fabulous "additional" area for native plant and minimal-lawn buffs like me to expand into beyond their own front yard (UK: garden). Because I'm in a cul-de-sac I've just got on with planting all along this verge outside my home -- removed the mangy grass & invasive weeds and smothered the ground with arborist wood chips, then planted native perennials that can tolerate the winter salting. Arborist wood chips -- NOT bark mulch -- are one of nature's gifts for the soil, and breaks down naturally over time, and is a magnet for a huge array of worms and insects, as well as being nice to walk on and keeping the soil cool and moist for your plantings. When I go back to visit UK, I'm in despair at the stark sterile look that passes for people's front and back gardens, and the acres of municipal grass kept shorn to an inch of its life. Take these areas over people of UK and plant for pollinators and birds!!
I have a small lawn, about 400 square feet. This winter I took it up and replaced it with a wildflower meadow. We had a long and rather late winter. So it's starting slowly. But it should be in full form next year.
Why did I do it? Because it makes the world a better place. It increases biodiversity.
1:20 to 2:00 These are all the wrong reasons for maintaining lawns. We don't need to remain stuck in environmentally destructive social attitudes. We can grow and change as we learn more.
1:29 And no, those little ugly patches of "landscaping" that have been neglected are NOT the alternative. They're just weed patches where whatever invasive plant happens to be in the area has taken over.
I was in Bavaria 2 years ago and I was thrilled to see that the people of Bavaria have come together to promote a replacement of lawns with meadows as a general policy. This came about through public discussions by citizens. They're doing it in a big way. Privately they're doing it in their own gardens. Publicly the towns and regional authorities are doing it as well. The results are amazing. For much of the year they are beautiful in all the conventional ways we like public landscapes to be beautiful. And in Autumn, when things start to die back things are most left to take their natural course, only being mowed back where necessary. A fallow meadow in winter is beautiful in its own way. Things don't have to be butch cut and trimmed.
I like this video but the title is a bit of clickbait. No mow May is not bullsh*t and we should be encouraging it. But we should be doing more.
I 💯 agree. Just last month I was taking a walk to the park and the lawns had gone absolutely wild! I'd never seen so many insects and flowers in one place. And then a few weeks later they were mowing it all down and I almost cried right there and then. No mow summer is a great conservation initiative, I hope to be able to convince my town to apply it. Thanks for your video, very helpful!
In my local park (River Walk Essex) the council have areas with cut grass always where children can play, families can picnic. They also leave areas untouched all year round and just mow a path through it. This way, wildlife and humans share the park equally and i think its lovely.
I say mow your lawn! And encourage your local council to leave designated areas just for wildlife.
I look no mow May the same way I look at people leaving dandelions for polinators in the spring; a little is better than nothing, and it's often a person's first baby step into rewilding and native gardening.
My friend and I purchased a real fixer upper in 2022 and last summer we did no mow May just to see what was growing in the yard. Then our lawn mower broke so we ended up not mowing August-October either. We found out that we have a ton of native violets and white wood aster in the yard, so now we're propagating those, while buying other native plants to add in.
We got an electric mower this year and we're cutting the grass at the highest length just to make the yard accessable while I work on getting rid of the non-native lawn bit by bit and replacing it with other ground covers and native flower beds.
I'm hoping as I keep working on it, I can engage my neighbors with the idea of planting natives and getting rid of the invasives. Plus, we've already seen an increase in birds and squirrels and bees in the yard!
I tried this "no mow" stuff last year, and all it really accomplished was to give the invasive plants a leg up on me. That said, I'm all for people re-thinking the lawns. As Dr. Tallamy shows us in his work, the problems of the environment aren't caused by huge building projects so much as they are by a million tiny little projects we call "lawns". If you look at a town, you see thousands and thousands of acres planted in non-native species like turf grass that are ecological black holes and serve no purpose in the food web. In the US, we have over 30,000,000 acres planted in Turf Grass, and that's more acreage than 20 of our largest national parks. What this means, though, is that the local ecosystem is so heavily fragmented that pollinators end up dying off because they can't find the specific plants that they need for a part of their life cycle. According to Dr. Tallamy's research, the insects in a given area have evolved as specialists rather than generalists, and they need a very specific plant for some part of their life. If you break up the landscape with non-native plants, you end up killing off those specialist insects because they can't find the one plant that they need. Sure, the insect might not be extinct on the grand national scale, but it is functionally extinct on the local scale. And that has follow-on effects like a decrease in the songbird populations who rely on those insects as a protein source to feed their young in the nests.
The importance of using plants that are native to your area cannot be understated. What "native" might mean can be open to discussion, but it's safe to say that a plant that has been in your local area for the last thousand years is a good bet.
For me, personally, I'm a stickler for formality in garden design. I don't mind a hint of rough-n-tumble, but I think we do ourselves a disservice by assuming that a landscape full of native plants has to look "wild". We forget that people are supposed to be the stewards of the land, and that means we get to pick and choose not only what is planted but where and how it is planted.
What I think appeals about the lawn is that it's just predictable and shows that someone is caring for the land. These "cues to care" make a really big difference in how people interpret the landscape. And, that means if we really want to get folks interested in re-wilding their own yards, we should show them how it can be done..... but done in a way that is orderly and respectable to their senses.
A formal hedge, for example, shows care and that there's a plan at work. Something as simple as an evergreen shrub placed ever few paces will give people something to look at all year long, and the fact that the spacing is equal... well, that again shows it was intentional. That the shrub just happens to be a native and is providing much needed benefit to the local ecosystem is a big bonus.
When you simply let your garden go, there's no "cue to care". You just look like a lazy bum who isn't taking care of his property.
We fix that by thinking about the design and remembering we are the stewards of the land. As we look at the lawn at the end of the video, it's easy to visualize winding paths taking you through the open savanah filled with wildflowers of every type. That'd be really really nice if you laid it out in a way that invites people to walk through the land. And even better if you have open spots of lawn where the kids can play or seating can be put out. The "cues to care" are the key thing.
No Mow May is a good start. it's that first step folks needed. Now we start on the second step.
All of that just to say ... I care too much about what other people think.
@@TheWanderingFinnegan Really? I would think the real question is - what are you trying to achieve? If you're trying to achieve a wide-spread acceptance of a new paradigm, caring about what other people think is actually rather necessary.
Your point about the paths winding through the growth touches on an important point some don't take into consideration, and that's that this doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing decision. My childhood home was on land that was half marsh, and mowing those areas was out of the question; so my parents shaped the lawn into these large swathes of grass that undulated with the wild growth, with rows of progressively longer grass right at the edges. This emphasized the intentionality of the design and gave space for smaller flowers and ground covers to abound out of the overgrowth, and it is one of my favorite views ever. Even dedicating a quarter, third, or half of most gardens/yards to (re)wilding will leave enough space for people to enjoy their land and do a lot of good for wildlife.
Really what we need is to extend no mow may, that was clearly the plan but for some reason a maintained lawn is still seen as hygienic while a wildflower meadow is seen as measy
I was thinking the same about mowing it all down. I let our garden be last summer and all sorts of flowers popped up in the lawn, yellow, purple, red, white and blue colors. You could see the stems bend when pollinating insects landed on them. There were probably hundreds of insects you could see from one view, but we've never had so few insects indoors as that summer. Probably the insects predators who came and took care of the ones who usually find their way indoors.
Aside from the National Heritage sites where they film Jane Austen adaptations, does Britain need lawns anymore?
I maintain a small area of grass at the front of my house as a lawn, and keep it mowed. I have another large area which I leave to grow and flower until sometime in June, when I scythe it and leave the mowings to dry and drop seed, before using the hay to make hot compost for feeding the vegetable garden. This works well here, as I get wonderful wildflowers throughout the spring, and a huge variety of insects and other wildlife.
I have a tiny garden with a lawn in the center and flower beds on the sides, with a path to the fence going through it. I can't afford a proper meadow because I'd just be unable to reach the flower beds or use the garden at all. But I also hate manicured turf grass, so Ive torn it all out and am replacing it with a tapestry lawn (look it up, PhD by a Brittish guy). Still a lawn but only flowering plants, and grass is now a weed I chase 😊
It's interesting, the first time I'd heard of this was a client (I'm a gardener in France) who said that she'd watched a report on the TV which said if you leave it for a month it's good for the wildlife. Thanks for dispelling the myth, I'll mention this to her next time I see her, try to convince her what you've convinced me.
I don't have a garden, just a bit of gravel driveway. But it has over 40 different native species growing on it now. Lots of interesting invertebrates turn up too. Probably looks like a dump to most people, but i love it.
Her in Florida in the States, we have no mow March. But, I've thought the same a month isn't long enough.
I've been slowly eliminating our lawn, by planting beds of native plants and flowers. We live in a state named for its wide breath of native wildflowers.
It's a shame people believe we must have sprawling green deserts for yards.
I work at "sGravenland" estates in holland. There are these lawns from the 17th century. We cut high, we cut only 12 times per year, we sometimes leave patches and rotate them to prevent from getting too much mass. But still. All those nooks and crannies are most easily cut by the lawn mower. It is fast, agile and not very heavy. But it can't cope with too much mass. Then you would have to switch to a whole other regime with different machines: a cutter, a raker, a loader. Those are cumbersome heavy and when you'd cut preferably late like after September, things get wet. That picture is way more expensive and after September looks not so nice. Also there are MANY opinions from as many users' en managers of these estates.
Tips are very welcome!
Awesome vid as usual, thanks!
Agree 100%. I have No Mow, Low Mow and Mow areas. I've generally used the RSPB guidance of no mowing between May and September for the Low Mow areas, with one littke tweak. I had a large grasshopper population and I stopped mowing when the first grasshopper was spotted and didn't mow again till a week or more had passed without seeing one. The weather has put the management policy on hold this year. Areas that should have gone into May fully mown are nearly waist high, so they'll now remain uncut till Autumn. Thanks again for the video.
We have a part of our garden without a wall next to the road and if we do not keep the lawn short people just trown their trash in our garden. So we keep the front of that garden short and let the rest grow all year round without cutting it at all.
The fun thing was that recently we noticed that one specific plant had been dug up by what we think were wildboar and they ate the root or bulb.
The amount of medicinal plants in that lawn is amazing! Just those little Daisies...Bellis perennis...are brilliant for pain...as an Australian, when I see UK lawns like that, I die of envy! 😍
We let our lawn grow (it consists of grass, moss, clover, and two other flowering plants) until I found a tick crawling in it. That's when I decided to mow it.
I’ve already made the decision to not mow my lawn this summer ! It’s already beautiful with wildflowers!
We have a long garden with trees in the front and back and some open field in the middle. We always mow a little path so we can walk to the back of our garden, but we almost never cut all of it. We love to see the different species in our garden. It gives a more natural feeling!
This is a great video. Thanks. I think councils mow verges and parks because they get too many complaints if they don`t. Apparently no-one complains when the verges are mown. So maybe we could have a campaign and complain more. But most people just see unmown grass as an untidy mess. To appreciate it needs a change in perspective, which I have struggled with and I want to help wildlife. If you`re not really bothered it`s even more difficult. For some of us it means overcoming years of conditioning. (In Wales, tidy=good. "It`s looking very tidy" = "It`s looking very good"). I think managing a lawn for wildlife is difficult in a garden particularly if it`s small, you have children, or want to use it as a social space. And just if you want your garden to look nice. I have found it difficult - this change in perspective and I am documenting my struggles on my channel. You could have a look if you`re interested in how difficult it is to make the transition from conventional gardener to wild gardener.
One of the original ideas for things like this was to give early insects something to feed on.
Here in the UK we have a lot of bees and insects that come out just when people are just starting to cut their grass.
All that pollen and nectar is then denied them during that VERY important time.
No mow May was there to give them access to that food source.
I was a municipal gardener up here in Yorkshire and one change that I was very happy to see was that verges were left and only a single strip was cut so that pathways were kept clear.
We also "cut corners" so that, instead of going right up to the edges as we did in the past, a border was allowed to grow.
Not only that but some open areas were cut less frequently... The only problem with that is that it makes our jobs more difficult and more stressful on the machines.
The other problem is that people complained.
People want to see grass short.
The other problem that isn't being mentioned here is that when grass is allowed to grow, it collects rubbish.
If we are going to allow verges and the like to grow then we need to do something about the litterbugs.
Too many times when it was time to cut the longer grass I would also be cutting crisp packets, bottles and cans.
When I was don't it looked AWFUL.
And before people comment... No... We didn't have time to pick up any litter before hand.
Councils are hacking the budgets to nothing... Municipal gardeners DO NOT have the time to pick litter before they cut. They would need to hire a LOT more people to do that.
I planted a wildflower strip along a fence this year. I hand trim it to keep it semi-tidy. I’m surprised at how much healthier the grass is, next to that strip, this year.
You raise some interesting points. It got me thinking that I havn't really heard anyone discuss the impact growing our vegetable has on the environment. I continually replenish the soil so it actually gets better, rather than depletes. I bury kitchen scraps in the garden, add coffee grounds and use kitchen water on plants. Everything that isn't growing vegetables grows flowers and herbs, and we have a small area around a fire pit where we chop up [ not chip] hedge trimmings etc as a mulch. Our garden is a haven for our family, for birds and insects, but what we do doesn't fit the rewilding definition? We don't buy any greens leafy veges, tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, beans, peas etc , we grow them. In NZ we grow and eat vegetables all year. I'd like to see you talk about this topic as well, because sometimes I feel guilty for using our outdoor space to grow our food rather than Native plants. We have only a tiny area, so we supplement it with large pots for veges and we have fruit trees.