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This autumn, help us find Britain’s most colourful and important fungi – waxcaps.
Fungi are crucial to nearly all life on Earth, but they are not given the recognition and investment they deserve. Will you join our mission to change that?
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Plantlife’s #NoMowMay is back this year.
Join our No Mow May™ movement. Don’t mow this May and let it grow!
Provide a feast for pollinators, tackle pollution, reduce urban heat extremes, and lock away atmospheric carbon below ground.
We’ve lost approximately 97% of flower-rich meadows since the 1930’s and with them gone are vital food needed by pollinators, like bees and butterflies.
But your lawn can help! A healthy lawn with some long grass and wildflowers benefits wildlife, tackles pollution and can even lock away carbon below ground. With over 20 million gardens in the UK, even the smallest grassy patches add up to a significant proportion of our land which, if managed properly, can deliver enormous gains for nature, communities and the climate.
This is why Plantlife calls for people to get involved with #NoMowMay every year, and let wild plants get a head start on the summer.
Best of all, to reap these benefits all you have to do is not mow your lawn in May and beyond!
Featured image, No Mow May 2023 participant Susie Dickinson’s lawn.
Help us to better understand the total number and size of lawns the UK is letting grow for nature.
2024 registration is now closed
See the Postal Code area map of those who join the movement. Be the first in your area to participate.
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Landscape
No Mow May is the perfect starting point to get your greenspace on track for a wild summer. Learn more about how to manage your wild lawn all year round!
Not as many wildflower in your lawn as you expected this year? Here are some tips from Plantlife’s wildflower experts to help you create a blooming bonanza!
If you want to create a home for wildlife in your garden, here’s a couple of nature-friendly gardening jobs to inspire you. If you create the right space, nature will come.
As well as bringing back the blooms to our lawns, there are many ways you can get involved in No Mow May, even if you don’t have a garden.
It’s not just our wonderful wildflowers which benefit from not mowing our lawns this May. Pollinators and other wildlife bring our gardens to life with buzzing and fluttering along our lawns, borders and hedges.
What do the peaks of the Eryri mountains and our garden lawns have in common? Robbie Blackhall-Miles, Plantlife’s Vascular Plant expert, explains how grazing works to protect our most species-rich habitats.
Yes, please join in! Collectively as garden owners and green space managers we can have a huge impact on biodiversity by letting every patch of grass flourish throughout the summer. Whether you have a postage stamp yard or a rambling estate, we can all make a difference in our own way.
Yes. If you don’t have a lawn, you could pledge to leave another green space unmown, such as field or a space at your place of work. Or you could join with others and participate as a community.
There are around 270 different species of wild bee in Britain and they can be pretty tricky to identify. For bumblebees, the Bumblebee Conservation Trust have produced a wonderful identification guide here. For butterflies, see the rather lovely Butterfly Conservation identification guide here.
Ticks are very small insects that spread a serious bacterial infection called Lyme disease. The ticks live on mammals such as hedgehogs, badgers and foxes and then drop off into long grass and vegetation, where we can pick them up and become infected. If you are bitten by a tick look out for flu-like symptoms such as feeling hot and shivery, headaches, aching muscles or feeling sick, and a circular red rash around the tick bite.
The occurrence of ticks in gardens is increasing, so you should wear long trousers and examine yourself carefully for ticks whenever you’ve been in long grass or other long vegetation.
In areas where ticks are prevalent, consider maintaining a shorter grass lawn mown once every four weeks. For more information see www.nhs.uk/conditions/lyme-disease and www.lymediseaseaction.org.uk
We encourage everyone gardening for nature to cut less for longer. Results from our previous No Mow May surveys show that keeping two to three different lengths of grass throughout the summer will maximise the diversity and quantity of flowers and the nectar they produce:
Leave some areas of long grass completely unmown all year to let taller flowers like Oxeye Daisy and Field Scabious come into bloom. These long grasses provide valuable feeding material, shelter, and nesting sites for species such as hedgehogs and toads – connecting them across our landscape.
Mid length ‘meadow’ areas are mown with cuttings collected just 2-3 times per year outside of April-August. They allow taller growing summer flowers to flourish like Meadow Cranesbill, Musk Mallow, knapweeds and scabiouses.
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 (2.5 to 5 cm). This allows smaller plants such as daisies and Bird’s-foot-trefoil to flower in profusion, providing a fabulous food source.
We understand this may seem frustrating, however, there might be reasons for local authorities to cut in the month of May despite committing to No Mow May. Which are:
Safety first
Many road verges are regularly cut to maintain clear lines of visibility and safe pullover zones, this is particularly crucial at junctions and on tight bends where visibility is low.
Restorative Management
In some cases, verges that are being restored for wildflowers may need more frequent cutting and removal of cuttings. This gradually leads to naturally lower levels of soil fertility that can support a greater biodiversity. Mowing can be less often and later following this restorative phase of management.
Contractual Obligation
Local authorities will often use contractors to manage road verges and may be committed to long term contracts which stipulate certain specifications. The maintenance contracts in place may pre-date a local authorities’ commitments to No Mow May.
Check your council’s website for more detail. If information is lacking, you could send your council an email directly to challenge their management practice and link them to our Best Practice Guide for Managing Grassland Road Verges. See here for more detail and for successful case studies.
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