Stop Mowing Your Lawn and Help Save Nature
Spring is in full swing and summer is just around the corner. The birds are nesting, insects are crawling and pollinators such as bees are beginning to be regular visitors to the gardens. At the same time, many are rushing out with their lawn mowers to cut down their grass. However, this is extremely damaging to nature and pollinators in particular, especially as ecological mismatch becomes more prominent. Therefore, in this post, we're going to share why you need to stop mowing your lawn and how you can help save nature by doing so.
Why Does Mowing Your Lawn Harm Nature?
Mowing your lawn often seems like the natural thing to do. Grass grows, it gets too long, it looks messy and we cut it down. However, this process harms nature. Humans striving for a tidy, neat and clean lawn actually goes against the natural order. Where in nature do you find a sole species of plant or tree? The answer is, you don't.
Mowing lawns and cutting back grass means a number of plants don't get the chance to flower. This includes plants like clover. Without them flowering, pollinators such as bees and butterflies are hindered (and they are already facing unprecedented threats!).
By keeping the grass short and stopping these plants from flowering and seeding, the biodiversity of your lawn is reduced. Less pollinators visit, less birds that eat pollinators visit and the small landscape can become very still. However, by allowing your lawn to grow nature can be helped and your garden can thrive!
Pink flowers in grass
How Does Leaving Your Lawn Alone Help Nature?
Letting your lawn grow can provide wonderful benefits to nature. Not only will you get to see a number of different plants flower, your garden will begin to welcome a hole host of important bugs and insects.
In fact, it has now been scientifically proven that letting your grass grow significantly increases the amount of pollinators your garden will attract. This is a huge boost to nature.
With more pollinators, garden birds have more food to eat and they become les threatened. This further helps nature as birds also play a huge role in local ecosystems.
Letting your grass grow doesn't just attract pollinators. It also provides micro habitats for other insects that play important functions in nature. In turn, you'll also likely see more hedgehogs and frogs whose habitats won't be disturbed or damaged by regular mowing.
A butterfly and bees on a flowering purple plant
Try It For Yourself
Fortunately, letting your grass grow is easy. Instead of spending time getting the lawn mower out the shed this weekend and wasting both planetary (electricity / fuel) and human (time and energy) resources sit back, relax and enjoy your garden space with the knowledge that it's benefitting nature.
While the idea of letting all of your lawn grow wild may be daunting, don't forget that you can start off slowly. Ideas for those new to growing their grass include:
Only mowing paths through the lawn for accessibility and allowing the rest to grow normally.
Dedicating "wild" spaces which are left to grow and then mowing other areas.
Also, don't forget that if you do cut your lawn grass clippings are best left in place, used as a mulch or composted instead of disposed of in a green waste bin. This helps maintain nutrients in your garden and improves soils rather than exporting them elsewhere which uses more resources.
Wildflower Garden Meadow
Join the Movement
If you are interested in helping nature then to stop mowing your lawn is a great starting place. It's a relatively easy thing to cut back on (no pun intended)! On top of this, you will save time and money.
Fortunately, there's a growing community around the world that are committed to letting their lawns grow. Much of this has been inspired by the #NoMowMay movement which encourages households to refrain from cutting their grass in the month of May when pollinators are in particular need of our support.
For more information on this great initiative check out the #NoMowMay movement on Plantlife's website and if you're interested in other ways you can help support nature and fight back against the climate crisis take a look at the following:
