The month of May is when all the grasses and wildflowers such as dandelions and buttercups start to sprout up and grow in abundance in people's back gardens, public parks and countryside. These provide a rich and sheltered habitat for bees and butterflies to live in, and these tiny creatures perform valuable tasks such as pollination which help to spread diversity and colour throughout our landscape.
Mowing these down will only reduce the biodiversity of the area and make it harder for animals and insects to exist in that environment. No Mow May is a campaign to get people to think about their local ecosystems and to think twice before mowing their grassy areas just to make them look neat or tidy.
If you can leave an area to just go wild then that's the best option! If you want to bring some sense of tidiness to your garden, try just mowing down the middle and leaving the edges to grow. Alternatively, get creative and mow different shapes such as a figure of eight into your lawn to break up the areas that are mowed/not mowed. If you want to go even further, the National Trust has shared a video on how to make a 'scaremow' to encourage people not to mow their lawns.
Not mowing your lawn is really crucial to protecting some of the UK's most valuable plant and insect species. The Conservation Charity 'Plantlife' is asking people to do a survey of the plants and flowers in their lawn at the end of May to see the diversity of plants and flowers that have been able to grow. You can also take part in their Great British Wildflower Hunt where they are asking people to go searching for different species and hopefully learn some new ones along the way.
Why not take a look at their website www.plantlife.org.uk and see what you can learn or do in your local area 🌼
