No Mow May: 6 Benefits Of A Wilder Garden

Good news for tired gardeners: no-mow May is upon us.

Experts like Monty Don recommend leaving our strimmers and mowers in the shed this month – even as late as the end of June – and letting our gardens grow wild instead.

Here are 13 bee-rilliant (sorry) reasons to lay down the blades:

Because of their open shape, bees find it really easy to extract much-needed pollen from yellow dandelions.

Calling the so-called “weed” our “most undervalued wildflower,” the Scottish Wildlife Trust added they also fuel other pollinators like butterflies, hover flies, day flying moths and solitary bees.

The Wildlife Trust for Lancashire, Manchester and Merseyside said that long grass is important for invertebrates, like insects, that “in turn provide food for birds and mammals such as hedgehogs″.

Additionally, some species, like craneflies and sawflies, which rely on longer grass to flourish, are “particularly important for the survival of young chicks”.

The common meadow brown butterfly lays its eggs in taller grass clumps, too.

Speaking to The Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, wildlife gardener Jack Wallington explained that “Wilder lawns are probably the most sustainable usable surface people can create because they absorb carbon as they grow”.

The Royal Horticultural Society added that “when you stop weekly mowing, your lawn starts on its journey to becoming natural grassland – one of the world’s most efficient carbon sinks, able to lock up over three tonnes of carbon per hectare”.

Yes, of course, you’re already down one task: mowing. But speaking to HuffPost UK previously, Helen Bostock, a senior wildlife specialist at the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), said that letting your garden grow wild can make it more self-sufficient.

“A vibrant garden ecosystem is one that requires [fewer] inputs from gardeners – when natural predators are keeping the aphids in check, [fewer] sprays are needed,” she shared.

“It is also more productive – when insect pollinators are in abundance, our fruit trees will set heavier, higher quality fruit.”

Plantlife, the organisation that invented No Mow May, did so in response to the UK losing 97% of its grassland meadows since the 1930s.

Letting your lawn breathe increases its biodiversity and number of wildflowers.

Not only is it adaptable to a range of environments (native wildflowers flourish in “poor” soil), but it can suit all different needs, too.

If you need to keep a path or verge clear, that’s OK: it’s not an “all or nothing” policy.

The RHS said that “You can ‘no mow’ your whole lawn or just part of it. Leave it long until at least August for maximum wildlife benefit.”