No Mow May – what is it all about?

What is No Mow May and why is a business who sells garden equipment asking you to keep your mower locked up this month? especially when it is a well-known fact that grass and flowers grow quickly during Spring and Summer, and if you long for a green, lush grass lawn at home then regularly mowing is essential.

It’s for a good cause that’s why – if you can stay away from the lawnmower for the whole of May, not only will you be inviting wildlife into your garden you could help contribute to Plantlife’s ‘Every Flower Counts’ survey that will take place from May 23 to 31.

To join you simply need to count the number of flowers in a random square metre of your lawn, it really is that simple, see how you can take part https://www.plantlife.org.uk/everyflowercounts/

Research undertaken by citizen scientists across the UK who have taken part in previous activity Plantlife’s ‘Every Flower Counts’ revealed:

• Over 200 species were found flowering on lawns including rarities such as meadow saxifrage, knotted clover and eyebright.
• 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.
• First ever National Nectar Score for our lawns: all lawn flowers in the survey combined produced a colossal 23kg of nectar sugar per day, enough to support 2.1 million – or around 60,000 hives – of honeybees.
• ‘Mohican’ lawn cut suits all: Highest production of flowers and nectar were on lawns cut every four weeks, whilst longer, unmown grass had a wider range of flowers.

However, when it is time to bring your mower out of the shed in June, you may be thinking you still want to encourage wildlife and flowers into your garden, and you can have the best of both worlds, mow the lawn in the middle and leave a longer edge border of grass and wild-flowers.

Finally, if it is time to purchase a new lawnmower and you are not sure which power source is right for you – cordless, electric, petrol or push, why not read one of our previous blogs on that subject. https://webbgardenpower.co.uk/2020/01/11/cordless-electric-petrol-or-push/