I'm not a fan tbh. I think this gives people the feeling that they are doing something amazing for wildlife but once the grass is mown again in June you are completely destroying the habitat. It would be far better if people simply left part of the lawn as a safe haven until the autumn and had the other parts short. Short grass is needed by many animals as well so it increases the habit you have.
It's what many of us are saying @thevictorian , @Sheps , @Palustris and @Skandi . However, when I dared to say it a year ago, I was given a ridiculous amount of grief from a few members here. Fortunately, the one who was always on a soap box about it [and other things ] seems to have disappeared, along with her main supporter.
It comes down to some basic factors - as it regularly does. The size and location of your plot, the conditions you have, and what wildlife you actually have around. No point trying to attract something that simply doesn't exist where you live.
It's a place where beautiful isn't enough of a word....
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
I don't. We used to leave a wide strip of lawn to go wild, but I dug it up for flower borders as it was just couch grass, and the campanula etc I put in didn't get a look in. I don't mow low, and I'm satisfied that I've provided other wildlife habitats for the bugs.
Just wandered across our newly cut lawn and realised that it is peppered with the soil mounds of mining bees. They prefer short grass and I for one am happy to provide them with it.
I think the premise is providing more food sources rather than a permanent habitat. I also suspect there is a hope that some will go on to leave all/some of their grass longer permanently or continue to leave larger gaps between mowing.
By allowing your grass to grow longer e.g. mowing at 4-6 weekly intervals you allow short grasses and some flowers to bloom which wouldn’t normally get the opportunity and this offers more food sources and some specific food sources that are otherwise lost.
If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”—Marcus Tullius Cicero East facing, top of a hill clay-loam, cultivated for centuries (7 years by me). Birmingham
Our front lawn really suffers in summer because our soil is so very free-draining, so we’ve given up attempting a lush greensward and haven’t used weed & feed etc on our grass for a few years now … we now have daisies, malva sylvestris, red dead nettle, prunella vulgaris, mouse ear, hawkbit, soft cranesbill, ragwort and Dove’s Foot 😉 … and those are just the ones I can remember without checking.
Some wild primroses have recently appeared in a nearby border and I’m hoping they may spread to the shadier end of the ‘lawn’.
As I’ve said, we hardly mow that half of the lawn at all and the grass is so sparse it doesn’t get thick and lush … we get lots of birds on that lawn, dunnocks, blackbirds and green woodpeckers for the ants, to name just a few.
So for us the No Mow is proving a good option. 😊
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
I have plenty of flowers in the borders, many of which seem to be popular with insects, so the small areas of lawn get cut. If I just cut the areas that I need to walk on to access the borders, washing line and compost bins there wouldn't be much left. There are some flowers that sit below the mower blades - violets and some kind of little speedwelly thing at the moment, sometimes daisies, sometimes clover, that sort of thing. There's long grass around here in plenty of gardens, verges, field boundaries and woodland edges/clearing, so there's a variety of habitats around. I don't need to provide it all in my small garden.
Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Soil type: sandy, well-drained
We've been doing NMM since the beginning of the year as our big mower is at the doctor's. It's taken hime 4 months to get around to identifying the electrical fault and now he's been waiting for some parts. Hope to get it back this week.
Meanwhile OH has mowed the "smarter" grass at the front with his electric mower plus some paths down to the barns, compost heaps and veg plot as well as the veg plot and a path round the pond but it all got too long for that machine so he's had to strim paths to the trees we've planted.
The grass that's left - about 2 acres - is full of red and white clover and all sorts of stuff that's good for pollinators but I have to say there is a disticnt lack of buzz when I'm walking thru it and not much evidence of the swallows and house-martins swooping over it. Nevertheless we'll leave a lot of it long as see what happens when the heatwaves come. I hope it's full of critters appreciating the shade and shelter and food.
Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
"The price good men (and women) pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men (and women)."
I think we're the scourge of Stepford, because we don't rush out every Sunday to scalp the lawn. 😄 It gets mown as and when. We get lots of self heal, which you can make an excellent tincture with.
We only mow the bottom (nearer house) part of the lawn now. 60% is left overgrown (attempted wild flower area).
Of course a lot depends on the weather/climate. It is probably more like March here compared to down South (UK). Bluebells have only just come into bloom during the past few days. Last Russian snowdrop died off a few days ago.
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It would be far better if people simply left part of the lawn as a safe haven until the autumn and had the other parts short. Short grass is needed by many animals as well so it increases the habit you have.
Fortunately, the one who was always on a soap box about it [and other things ] seems to have disappeared, along with her main supporter.
It comes down to some basic factors - as it regularly does. The size and location of your plot, the conditions you have, and what wildlife you actually have around. No point trying to attract something that simply doesn't exist where you live.
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
East facing, top of a hill clay-loam, cultivated for centuries (7 years by me). Birmingham
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Meanwhile OH has mowed the "smarter" grass at the front with his electric mower plus some paths down to the barns, compost heaps and veg plot as well as the veg plot and a path round the pond but it all got too long for that machine so he's had to strim paths to the trees we've planted.
The grass that's left - about 2 acres - is full of red and white clover and all sorts of stuff that's good for pollinators but I have to say there is a disticnt lack of buzz when I'm walking thru it and not much evidence of the swallows and house-martins swooping over it. Nevertheless we'll leave a lot of it long as see what happens when the heatwaves come. I hope it's full of critters appreciating the shade and shelter and food.
We get lots of self heal, which you can make an excellent tincture with.
Of course a lot depends on the weather/climate. It is probably more like March here compared to down South (UK). Bluebells have only just come into bloom during the past few days. Last Russian snowdrop died off a few days ago.