Support ‘No Mow May,’ leave lawns unmowed for wildlife
For the past couple of years, lepidopterist Victor DeMasi has, on principle, let his front lawn go wild.
As a result. DeMasi has found at least a couple of butterfly species in the unkempt tangle of his Redding home that he hadn’t seen before.
“I was seeing pearl crescents and broken dashes,” he said. “There were bumblebees and sweat bees.”
DeMasi is part of a growing movement called No Mow May — an effort to get away from having a perfectly trimmed, perfectly green and perfectly sterile lawn.
By granting dandelions and violets and weeds their place in the spring, No Mow May’s proponents say, those plants provide pollinators with a desperately needed source of nectar when the rest of the world has yet to bloom.
“They’re even more important for the native bees than they are for honeybees,” said Laura Rost, of Bee City USA and Bee Campus, promoters of No Mow May.
It means gas-powered lawnmowers will be burning less fuel. It means less wear-and-tear on said mowers. It means less noise and quieter weekend mornings. It means a little less time spent on lawn work and a little more time to stop and smell the dandelions.
People are starting to catch on, and do more for backyard biodiversity by doing less.
“It really has just taken off,” Rost said. “It’s becoming a big deal this year.”
No Mow May campaigns are in at least three towns — Brookfield, New Milford and Norwalk.
Jeffrey Bronn, chairman of the Brookfield Conservation Commission, said his group distributed 20 No Mow May signs in 2021 and another 20 this year. The sign let neighbors know an unmown lawn in May is not a manifestation of sloth and suburban blight.
“Some of the people did hear from their neighbors,” Bronn said.
Louise Washer, president of the Norwalk River Watershed Association, has given her front yard in Norwalk over to wildflowers and weeds.
“The queen bumblebees really need the flowers when they emerge,” Washer said. “Honestly, we didn’t mow until June.”
Sarah Hutchinson, of Weston, is a no-mower as well. It fits in on her work on the town’s Pollinator Pathway, which encourages private landowners to support biodiversity.
“It’s fantastic to see how the grass can come to life,” she said
She’s a proponent of Let It Bloom in June and of allowing goldenrod and other late-summer wildflowers to flourish.
“I think I mowed in October,” she said.
But Bronn said ingrained habits are hard to change.
“We had 20 people involved last year, 20 to 30 people this year,” he said of the efforts in Brookfield. “People want to mow their lawns.’’
Bee City USA and Bee Campus are part of the work of the Xerces Society, a nonprofit environmental organization dedicated to invertebrate conservation. Bee City USA and Bee Campus organize communities and colleges to help protect pollinators..
No Mow May was started in Great Britain by the group Plantlife. Bee City USA has taken up the cause in America. You can find the campaign’s website at https://beecityusa.org/no-mow-may/
The aim is to get everyone — homeowners and communities — to let spring bees and wildflowers flourish. People can set apart a section of their lawn, or their whole greensward, and let it go wild. Towns and cities can mow public spaces less often — a move that will save those towns money.
At the very least, Bee City USA suggests mowing every two or three weeks, rather than every week. It cites a study by Susannah Lerman, a research ecologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service.
Lerman and her team mowed herbicide-free sections of lawn in Springfield, Mass., on one-, two-, and three-week cycles. Lawns mowed every two weeks had more pollinator activity that those mowed every week; those mowed every three weeks had still more native bees and insects..
Bee City USA urges people to stop, or at least cut back on using chemical lawn-care pesticides and herbicides. These products can produce a perfect green carpet. But such spaces are monocultures without the weeds and flowers that promote insect life, and in turn, bird life and a whole range of biodiversity. DeMasi of Redding agrees “I don’t use any pesticides,” he said.
In turn, he gets to study butterflies close at hand, rather than making field trips far afield.
“Now, they’re right in my front yard,” he said.