No Mow May

The ultimate concept of No Mow May is not really to stop mowing in May specifically, or to leave whole swathes of your lawn unmown. Behind the catchy title is a simple concept: get people to change their habits so that they mow less – ideally once a month – and possibly even leave a patch or two of grass to grow long.

In our view, just getting your lawn out of winter and into spring and summer takes a lot of work and effort.  Letting your lawn go wild for a month will undo all your hard work and create a thin sward.

At the end of May, you will spend the rest of the growing year trying to get your lawn back together again.  Having said this, May is the month when the grass plants will naturally set seeds and free seed is free seed.

We have seen bowling greens abandoned by a local authority be brought back into play after some painstaking work, for the surface to have the most wonderful selection of turf grasses brought about by natural over seeding for a couple of years previous.

Join legions of gardeners and say “no” to the mow this May to help our bees, butterflies, wildlife and us!

Plantlife’s No Mow May campaign doesn’t ask you to do much. In fact, it asks you to not do anything at all… Just lock up your lawnmower on May 1^st and let the wild flowers in your lawn bloom, providing a feast of nectar for our hungry pollinators.

Plantlife’s annual campaign, #No Mow May launches this year on 29 April 2022.  Full details of the campaign, to be run in association with Lidl, including a wide range of new resources for download will be added regularly from this page over the next couple of weeks. Note that No Mow May has been trademarked this year for the first time.

Let it grow… let it groooow…

At the end of the month, join in with our nationwide “Every Flower Counts” survey. Not only will you receive your very own “nectar score” for your lawn, you’ll help us learn more about the health of the nations’ wild flowers.

People embracing the value of wilder lawns are delivering some thrilling botanical results: Last year (2021) the conversion to wilder lawns saw records of bee orchids, snake’s-head fritillaries and eyebrights. We can’t wait to find out what might pop up this May!

If you’re a council, join in by leaving parks and road verges to go wild. Our Road Verge Campaign provides award-winning guidance on how to mow less often and later in the year instead. And the fun doesn’t stop for farmers… A three acre meadow can be home to 9 million flowers producing enough nectar to support ½ million bees every day. We’re working hard to save, create and restore wildflower meadows through our meadow making projects and our network of nature reserves.

Join the campaign