The Natural Gardener
If you’ve left your lawn long this spring, due to drought, lack of time or oversight, don’t reach for the mower just yet as there’s still time to get involved with ‘No Mow May’. This campaign, from the wildflower conservation charity Plantlife, started a few years ago and requires you to do… nothing at all! No campaigning, no work, no gardening – just leave your lawn unkempt for the whole month. This is so it’ll give time and space for a number of wildflowers to grow such as clover, daisies, selfheal and dandelions, which will provide a feast of nectar for hungry pollinators. One less job to do in the garden, and you’re helping wildlife – that’s my kind of gardening.
It’s all in aid of feeding the bees, but, of course, there’s a real point to it; at the end of May you can then join in with ‘Every Flower Counts’, a survey asking you to record all the wildflowers that appear in a square metre of your lawn, chosen at random, during the period from May 22-May 31. You’ll be helping Plantlife monitor which flowers are most abundant on lawns and work out how much nectar they’re producing for pollinators. Your lawn will even get its very own ‘nectar score’ to tell you how many bees it can feed!
Past surveys have thrown up fascinating results. Eighty per cent of lawns were found to support the equivalent of about 400 bees a day. The top three lawn flowers are daisy, white clover and selfheal, while rarities such as meadow saxifrage, knotted clover and eyebright were listed. The national nectar score for all lawn flowers in the survey combined produced enough nectar sugar to support about 60,000 hives full of honeybees! Interestingly, the highest production of flowers and nectar were on lawns cut once every four weeks, which gives short-grass plants such as daisies and white clover a chance to flower abundantly, boosting nectar production tenfold. Areas of longer unmown grass (dubbed ‘superlawns’) are more diverse, with ox-eye daisies, scabious and knapweed broadening the bee banquet.
Our lawn is new and I confess I’m leaving it long to develop better; it’ll be a while before it’ll qualify as good forage for pollinators.
In the future I’ll probably consider a ‘Mohican’ cut – leaving useful, closely-mown paths surrounded by longer patches of buttercup, daisy and dandelion-filled grass.
It’s amazing what a few simple changes to your lawn-mowing regime will do. Perhaps you’re keen on the wildlife your flowery lawn brings and, when June arrives, you’ll want to carry on; say goodbye to ‘No Mow May’ and welcome ‘Let it Bloom June’ or ‘Knee High July’!
Visit www.plantlife.org.uk.