No mow May

I've had to give in, and mow the front today, albeit on a high setting this time around. We've just come back from a week in Lincs, and it was getting on for knee-high in places, also Mrs Lawman was scowling at me and saying there'd be sofas and washing machines flytipped in it before long. To be fair, I started No Mow May in mid April, so its had nearly 6 weeks untouched up to now.
I could see little of interest apart from seeding grasses, loads of dandelions, daisies, a few large plantains and some clover. But I'll happily confess to a pretty poor level of botanical expertise, which means there may be more there which I've not seen or recognised.
The back lawn needs kept fairly short at all times for doggy business.

I could see little of interest apart from seeding grasses, loads of dandelions, daisies, a few large plantains and some clover. But I’ll happily confess to a pretty poor level of botanical expertise, which means there may be more there which I’ve not seen or recognised

As I understand it, the overall biome of most gardens is pretty poor. You need to actively introduce species, consider soil improvements including fungi and microorganisms etc.

Our lawn has a few daisies in it but precious little else.
Is long grass in itself good for bugs or can I give it a cut?

Cut mine. Scarified it , aerated it sanded seeded and top dressed it.

Moss isn't much fun to play on when it stays wet.

Also added an electric sheep to keep it at a decent length

The bank and ditch + roadside are all still growing their best life with all the wild seeds I planted when I restructured it - as is my native hedgerow species hedge all up the side of the house so I don't feel guilty.

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Going to leave mine for another few weeks. It's full of clover which hasn't yet flowered. I enjoy making interesting patterns/blocks so it doesn't look too unkempt. It'll stay lie this until the end of June if the last couple of years are anything to go by.

The wisteria is full of bees, and I've an enormous climbing rose which is about to flower. There's another 1/3 acre of steep slope full of various wild flowers and tree blossom for them to go at.

Have let front & back grow and all I have now is longer monoculture grass. Given the previous owner actually used the lawn as a putting green I think it's going to take a couple of years to get more stuff in there.

To those complaining that there's 'only' daisies and dandelions in their lawn, can I suggest you take some time to appreciate how nice they are as flowers? I think they're great and insects certainly agree.

Apologies if already covered, but, I did no mowing at all last year for the majority of my very small lawn. Only cut a strip around 4 sides so we could get to the borders. That left a 2.5 x 2.5m bit of lawn to go wild. Unsurprisingly only grass or clover (no flowers) grew 😂. So, after this year leaving it until after we get back from annual trip to the lakes, I'm wondering if we should plant spring bulbs so that they grow through the lawn in spring, and they then get cut down after flowering post-no mow may??

I cut mine on Monday as it getting ridiculous and no flowers were left.

I'm done with this now, it's a mess and I can't find my bike anymore

The local squirrels plant oak trees for me, got quite a few little saplings growing now, one of which is now taller than me!

Plenty of flowers growing in the lawn too, I’ll wait until the wild orchids have died before cutting the grass.

Ultra tidiness and neatness is partly what's got us into this biodiversity mess, and what initiatives like NoMowMay are trying to combat, re-educate etc.

I'm working on embracing the idea of it being 'a mess' and plan to leave mine wild at the back, apart from a mown strip around the edge to access borders like @fazzini

May not look like your Grandparents' lawn, but it's a much better habitat for wildlife.

This was the first May we've taken this approach and I'm happy with the outcome. We didn't stop cutting all the grass during the month as we'd not managed a post-winter cut before the end of April due to weather/location, but rather than cut all the grass we've left one quarter uncut along with letting the boundaries grow in a bit too. The garden's massive and the uncut area's approx 25m x 15m. I wish we'd adopted this approach sooner: looks better IMO, much less work and far quicker to cut the grass now. We've always had a lot of wildlife in the garden and this can only be better for it.

Mown a meandering path through the 'wilding' section where we've got a few more fruit trees establishing.

Ultra tidiness and neatness is partly what’s got us into this biodiversity mess, and what initiatives like NoMowMay are trying to combat, re-educate etc.

It's certainly made me think and change my behaviour. We've not fully embraced the 'mess' approach but we're partway there - need a balance between a decent mown area for the kids to play on, while letting a good part of the garden go wild.

Jeez, is that the local park, or your actual garden?? 😳😂

Can I just remind the impatient amongst us, that nature takes her time.
Our lawn has been left over the summer months for several years and it's only in the last two that red clover has appeared.
Keep at this and flowers will come, wildlife will appear.
Just crouch down on a sunny day and watch the amount of insect life hovering above the long grass area. Lots of insects use the long grass as a sanctuary.
It doesn't matter if you only leave a square metre uncut, it's better than nothing.

Our lawn will be left now for a while longer as we're in a drought.

I'd love to leave our bottom third longer but I don't think it would be good for Mrs Pondo's blood pressure. 🙁

Can I just buy a bucket of wild flowers seeds and chuck them on the lawn for next Spring? Should I do that now, pre-cut, or post-cut, or leave it till Autumn or something? Or is that just a waste of time?

We’ve also got a carpet of wild strawberries !

Also- some lovely gardens on show here 👍

I agree with @Bunnyhop patience is key! I carefully mowed round violets on joint front lawn, starting over 30 years ago, these have now spread and my no mow spring and summer areas (I mow my neighbours on very high to stop him butchering ours), has now got orchids (in the wrong acid soil), ladysmock, fox and cubs and others. I am lucky to have a very large garden (small house) and there are some areas I don’t cut at all and some only once in very late Autumn, the variety of flowers, insects and birds that we get is better every year - buttercups took a while to arrive but now they take over after the cowslips. If you leave your grass then it flowers too, lots of different varieties and pretty in its own right.
My wife recently said that our front looked like we’d died so I tidied the edges and cut some neat defining strips and all is good, we’re still alive to appreciate it too, bonus!

Not mowing related but currently laying in a hammock enjoying the bees in the garden 🐝

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Have left a strip up the middle where the daisies are.
The front has dandelions about 18 inches high. Once they have gone I'll cut the front

My employers have done no-mow May. The gardeners are just starting to cut the edges of the lawns, and slowly making paths through it.

pondo
Full Member
I’d love to leave our bottom third longer but I don’t think it would be good for Mrs Pondo’s blood pressure. 🙁

Can I just buy a bucket of wild flowers seeds and chuck them on the lawn for next Spring? Should I do that now, pre-cut, or post-cut, or leave it till Autumn or something? Or is that just a waste of time?

Probably the best way is to scrub back some of the lawn and take as much grass away as possible. This will look bare but wildflower seeds need areas that aren't fertile. Mix some wildflower mix with sand,scatter, water well and tread this down. The better option is to grow the wildflower mix in pots and plant up the individual flowers straight into your preferred lawn area. As I'm not an expert but have years of experience it takes time to grow a mini meadow and it doesn't always look great for years after. Best thing is to just make it for nature and something will probably grow in time.

As per my previous post I started letting an area of the garden grow a bit late in May but it has come on nicely and I will leave it until late August so that it can recover to lawn before winter

It divides the garden up quite nicely

It hasn't been long but really happy to see clover and forget me nots coming through

The back of the garden that only strim once at the end of the season for the last five years or so is turning into a nice jungle. We have had a hand in guiding it but it has done its own thing this year. It is full of wildlife

The pond we put in last year is so active it was a great addition for the wildlife. It has frogs, newts, and all sorts of little creatures. I said I would be really happy if we had dragonfly visit because they are never seen in our village but I had two damselfly mating by it yesterday.

jp-t853 - gorgeous.
The little blue flowers are 'speedwell' of which there are many varieties.
The damsel flies will come eventually, it takes a few years for the larvae to grow and come out into the big wide world.
Edit - the pond probably needs some oxygenating plants and at least 60 - 75% cover (pond plants attract insects and help the dragonflies climb out of the water when the time is right). A good garden centre with a fishery/pond section will advise.
Your garden is perfect.

Show me your pond!

Bearnecessities from STW started a thread ^^ 3 yrs ago, loads of info for pond health. :o)
'Sorry don't know how to link it'.

Thanks for the compliment we are really happy with the way the garden is shaping this year with minimal input and the longer grass sections will be a regular feature.

It was a bit of an unknown risk putting the pond in a more shady part of the garden but it has worked well.
We have plants at the other end and although I saw no frogspawn there are nice fat tadpoles in the foliage of the smaller plants. This is where the damsel flies settled.
We have a pump circulating water which is how I found out we had newts because one was stuck against the inlet. I released it and it swam away fine but the pump now has some tights around it to stop things getting sucked in.

Yeah, I think No Mow May is a bit half-hearted.

My lawn throws up buttercups, devils paintbrush and clover which are all starting to flower now. By end of June the clover will be fully flowering so I’ll wait until then to mow the blocks. It’s the clover that brings in the most bees and on a warm day when it’s in full bloom it can be absolutely covered in them. We’re at over 1200 feet so the lawn has a habit of returning to moss and all sorts of weeds anyway, so I gave up on “manicured” long ago.

The garden got a good rake and a high cut with the mower this evening. First time since April. It could do with rain and a few more weeks of sunshine to grow some more wild flowers.

Out front is coming on OK now, difficult to see in photos I think but there are plenty of flowers now. I’ve been pulling out the long grasses to hopefully stop them taking over completely and will see if we can get away with leaving it until the end of the summer.

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And more 🐝🐝

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Taking inspiration from others in the thread, the back is going to get the edges mowed and a couple of paths down to the shed etc but mostly left.

We've done no mow may (well no mow summer tbh!) on the top bit of our garden again (our garden is a bit stupidly large - we bought a garden with a knackered house attached). Did it slightly differently this year by only doing one cut in March - last year I did a cut at the end of march as well as the start. Seems to have resulted in more wild flowers. Also we've had some of the yellow rattle we've been planting for the past couple of years taking, as well as a lot of dog daisies. Still mainly grass but seems a bit wilder at least. I cut windy paths into it that our little ones love running down. Also planted a load of native trees (mainly hazel) to break up the grass a bit.

Will now leave this as is until some point in august where i'll have a nasty few days of cutting it for hay, hand bailing it, and giving it to which ever local mad horse person wants it.

I took down the dog fence the previous owner put up in strategic places a couple of years ago. Get a lot of badgers, muncjac and somewhat unexpectedly the day before yesterday two (very large, but i assume Roe) deer bucks cavorting up and down the garden chasing each other which was quite exciting.

Got the drone out to make a quick video.

Out front is coming on OK now, difficult to see in photos I think but there are plenty of flowers now.

You'll be on similar ground to me - hardly any soil and then sand 🙂

My no mow may was a largely a result of not owning a lawnmower - didnt occur to me to buy one when I moved last autumn. perfect for nice flowery lawns becuase the ground is pretty infertile so the more competitive grass can muscle everything else out. I found the grass grew most vigorously are the edges where the border have been cultivated more over the years - you can see areas that have maybe been veg patches in the past and again the grasses there are very robust.

Great to see what really ground should look like - that once a square foot of turf would have been a valid subject for art

If its not been mentioned already the 'Park Grass Experiment' is an interesting read in that inadvertantly the control field - the one where no work was done to improve the ground is the most most varied and diverse.

Finally gave my lawns a trim with a hedge trimmer! But basically cut above the various flowers just taking off the taller grass stalks and the shaggier grass at the edges. Maybe get a mower next year. 🙂

I gave up in the middle of the month.
We still had a little snow arriving up until mid april this year (not settling though) and one last dump on the 1st/2nd May. So the grass hadn't even started moving.

Come the middle of the month it was well on the way to 6" tall and still going. Both kids have picked ticks up from it and i've found a couple on my legs. So i cracked the mower out and set it going on maximum height.

The front "lawn" has gone mental as well. But i'll leave that another couple of weeks.

I am fortunate to have 8 acres of grass and trees, i mow about 1.5 acres of it and the field 6 acres is not cut for Hay until the end of June.

I have endless amounts of wildlife and wild flowers but i do pull out Ragwort.

Spring/ summer 3 of our rear meadow. Mowed in Autumn and Spring. As you can see this year the oxide daisies are making a bid for dominance.

Previous lawn was dense as we used a mulching mower. In year 0 we let it grow all summer then cut it really short and scarified it so lots of bare mud was showing. Sowed some yellow rattle and meadow mix and pretty much let it get on with it apart from the mowing. The low yellowy things are the yellow rattle. There are also dandelions, buttercups, ragged robin and some other stuff there. We had poppies initially, but none this year 😪

Well that didn't seem to work I will try another way...

Oh dear its so long since I shared photos, sorry peeps

Well it's going to be hard work getting this down to knee height!

Still at least I'll earn my afternoon beer in the sun

Well that wasn't as bad as I feared. Lots of bind weed, horse and mare's tail pulled at the back but plenty other stuff to take it's place with a bit of luck.

A glorious elephant hawk moth seemed less than happy about my trimming but scuttled off quickly when placed on the woundwort.

Yellow thing in the first and purple thing second and third are new this year too.

The poppies look like they may be returning later in the year as well which is nice

Just taking the bins down the drive and noticed among the buttercups and long grass a paler yellow flower with pointy leaves. I’ve identified it as yellow rattle and found some more on the aforementioned shared lawn. I’m amazed that it’s arrived on its own, never scattered any seeds in the 35 years we’ve been here so can only assume a dormant seed from when it was last meadow in the 1920’s or brought in by a bird or mammal.
Isn’t nature amazing!

Found a few unidentified flowers in the front lawn but the back is still monoculture at the moment.

Bring on ‘let it bloom June’ and ‘can’t be arsed to cut the grass july’

We did an accidental no mow May though being away. Well I did mow at the very start of May, but not again until this morning. Disappointing results, almost no flowers, a couple of buttercups and some yellow rattle that's spread from my upper wild meadow and was just starting to bloom. Some tall daisies hadn't come out, and they got chopped.

Other than that, lots of grass flowers, but that's not much use for the wildlife! And a month's growth didn't need collecting, just mulched down fine.

The permanent wild meadow OTOH is going great, all sorts of things have arrived over the few years we've had it.

My conclusion is that a single month of no mowing is a bit of pointless gesture, at least this year, in my garden. Maybe elsewhere and if it hadn't been so dry, things might have been a bit better.

Incidentally with ref to the previous poster talking about yellow rattle, I'm amazed how little mine has spread. I seeded the wild meadow when I established it some years ago, it's an absolute sea of yellow every year, and I get about half a dozen of them each year in the proper lawn which is all of 5 feet away and down hill.

My conclusion is that a single month of no mowing

Oh, I assumed it meant no mow [until its after] May, so five months plus probably three at the end of last year.

I guess that's why the allotmentistas send me snotty messages.

Of course a big motivator in allowing lawn to turn to meadow, apart from the various bits of wildlife it attracts, is that a Poldark might turn up during your Diet Coke break

What, and tempt Mrs brain away? I'll pass ta.