Why We Need More Than “No Mow May”
Each spring, roadsides and gardens begin to shimmer with daisies, buttercups, self-heal, clover, speedwell and dandelions. Bees return to the air. Hoverflies drift over the grass. Birds begin gathering insects for their young.
And for one month of the year, many people take part in the increasingly popular campaign known as “No Mow May” — allowing lawns to grow wild in order to support pollinators and biodiversity.
It is, without question, a positive movement.
But perhaps the most important thing to understand is this:
Wildlife does not disappear at the end of May.
The moment long grass is cut back down to a close-cropped lawn in June, much of the habitat that has just begun to recover is lost again.
A Lawn Is More Than Grass
A traditionally mown lawn is, ecologically speaking, a very quiet place.
Frequent mowing prevents most wildflowers from flowering, which means there is little nectar for bees and butterflies. It also removes seed heads for birds, shelter for insects, and cover for amphibians and small mammals.
But leave a patch untouched for long enough, and something remarkable begins to happen.
The “weeds” return first — though many are native wildflowers with long histories in British herbalism and folklore. Clover feeds bumblebees. Dandelions provide one of the earliest food sources for pollinators in spring. Plantain and self-heal creep through the grass. Oxeye daisies may begin to appear.
Longer grass also creates shade and moisture at ground level, allowing beetles, spiders, caterpillars and countless other tiny creatures to thrive.
And these insects are not separate from the wider ecosystem — they are the foundation of it.
A single clutch of blue tit chicks may require thousands of caterpillars before fledging. Hedgehogs rely on insect-rich habitats. Frogs shelter in damp, unmown corners. Even bats benefit indirectly from gardens rich in insect life.
The Problem With “One Month Wild”
The difficulty with stopping mowing for only one month is that ecological systems take time to establish.
Flowers need time to bloom and set seed. Insects need continuous shelter and food sources. Grasslands become richer gradually, season after season.
If everything is cut back hard in early June, many nests, feeding sites and flowering plants disappear almost overnight.
For wildlife, consistency matters far more than short seasonal gestures.
This does not mean every garden must become an overgrown meadow. But even allowing certain areas to remain longer throughout the year can make a meaningful difference.
Rethinking What a Garden Should Look Like
For decades, tidiness has often been treated as a sign of care.
Short lawns. Bare borders. Everything clipped and controlled.
But historically, gardens were often much more useful, abundant and alive than the modern sterile lawn. What we now call untidy was once simply normal — spaces filled with herbs, flowering plants, long grass, fruit trees, birds and insects.
Perhaps part of the challenge is aesthetic.
We have become accustomed to seeing nature only when it is heavily managed.
Yet there is another kind of beauty in watching seed heads move in the wind, hearing crickets in long grass, or noticing bees gathering around flowering clover on a warm evening in May.
A garden does not need to resemble a golf course to be cared for.
Small Changes Matter
Even the smallest changes can help create habitat:
- Leaving a strip of grass unmown along a fence or hedge
- Allowing spring flowers to bloom before cutting
- Mowing pathways through longer grass rather than cutting everything
- Leaving dandelions and clover for pollinators
- Reducing mowing frequency through summer
- Allowing seed heads to remain into autumn and winter
These quieter corners quickly become refuges for wildlife.
And often, once people begin noticing what appears in a less-managed garden — butterflies, bees, goldfinches feeding on seed heads, frogs hidden in long grass — it becomes difficult to return to constant cutting.
A Different Relationship With the Land
Perhaps the real value of No Mow May is the conversation it begins. It's an opportunity to pause and reconsider our relationship with the spaces around us. To see lawns not as surfaces to control, but as living ecosystems and to recognise that wildflowers are not failures of maintenance. And to remember that the natural world does not operate according to our calendars. The bees still need flowers in June, the caterpillars still need shelter in July, the birds will need seeds in the autumn.
The message is, that nature doesn't stop at the end of May, so try having a piece of your garden wild all year round, the benefits can be amazing!
You could preserve a few of the wildflowers you find in our new handmade botanical flower press!
Follow this blog for recipes and DIY beauty projects you can make using some of the plants you will find popping up in your garden. Read this blog about using some of those plants here.