Join gardeners across the country this May by locking up your lawnmower and saying ‘no’ to mowing for the month in order to help our bees, butterflies, and wildlife by letting the wild flowers in your lawn bloom, providing a feast of nectar for our hungry pollinators.

“The sheer quantity of flowers and nectar production on lawns mown once a month can be astonishing,” Dr Trevor Dines, Plantlife’s Botanical Specialist, explains.

“We’ve discovered that plants like daisy, white clover, and bird’s-foot trefoil are superbly adapted to growing in shorter swards. These short-grass, ‘mower-ducking’ plants stay low down with stems well out of the way of the mower blades, but continually produce large numbers of flowers every few weeks. If these flowers are cut off by mowing, it just stimulates the plants to produce yet more flowers, boosting nectar production.”

“In contrast, tall-grass species like oxeye daisy, red clover, field scabious, and knapweed grow upright and take longer to reach flowering size. They can’t cope with being cut off regularly, so only bloom in grass that’s not been mown for several months or more.

Our results show these unmown long-grass areas are home to a greater range of wild flower species, complementing the narrower range found in short-grass areas.”

Dr Dines added, “In any garden, big or small, we’d advise keeping two lengths of grass. Leave some patches completely unmown to let taller flowers come into bloom. For the rest of the lawn, you can keep the grass shorter by mowing once every month to a height of 1 or 2 inches. You’ll cut off some flowers when you do mow but they’ll come back quickly; you can even rotate patches around your garden so there are always some areas in flower.

For flowers, bees, and butterflies there is one lawn ‘haircut’ that really suits: the mohican. Most should be given a monthly cut to boost short sward plants but there should also ideally be an area set aside for longer grass where floral diversity abounds.”

At the end of May, join in with the countrywide ‘Every Flower Counts’ survey to discover how many bees the UK’s lawns can feed and learn more about the health of the nations’ wild flowers.

Research undertaken by citizen scientists across the UK who have taken part in Plantlife’s ‘Every Flower Counts’ survey reveals not only the astonishing diversity of wild flowers growing on our lawns, but that incredibly simple changes in mowing can result in enough nectar for ten times more bees and other pollinators.

• Over 250 species were found flowering on lawns including wild strawberry, wild garlic and a dazzling array of rarities including adders’-tongue fern, meadow saxifrage, knotted clover, snake’s-head fritillary, and eyebright. Wild orchids including the declining man orchid, green-winged orchid, southern and northern marsh orchid, and bee orchid lit up liberated lawns.
• The top three most abundant lawn flowers are daisy, white clover, and selfheal. Over half a million flowers have been counted, including 191,200 daisies.
• The highest production of flowers and nectar sugar was on lawns cut once every four weeks. This gives ‘short-grass’ plants like daisies and white clover a chance to flower in profusion, boosting nectar production tenfold.
• Areas of longer unmown grass were, however, more diverse in their range of flowers, with other nectar-rich plants like oxeye daisy, field scabious, and knapweed increasing the range of nectar sources for different pollinators and extending nectar availability into late summer.

Plantlife’s ‘Every Flower Counts’ has been able to quantify the amount of nectar sugar being produced on our lawns. This National Nectar Score shows the average lawn can produce 12 grams of nectar sugar per day, enough to support 1088 honeybees. When all the lawns in the survey are combined, they can produce 23kg of nectar sugar per day, enough to support 2.1 million – or around 60,000 hives – of honeybees.

Dr Dines added, “Of course, all this nectar is available to a huge range of pollinating insects – from flies and beetles, to butterflies and bumblebees. With a third of wild bees and hoverflies in decline, ‘Every Flower Counts’ shows the vital difference everyone with a lawn can make in supporting these pollinators by cutting back on the mowing.

Between 1980 and 2013, every square kilometre in the UK lost an average of 11 species of bee and hoverfly, so the dense patchwork of lawns provided by our gardens really can throw our pollinators a lifeline. We just have to let the flowers bloom.”

It is very easy to take part in the ‘Every Flower Counts’ survey. It takes just a few minutes to do, and children love to help! Parking the mower can be the best decision you make this May!