Are you doing 'no mow may' ?

[finallygotospeaktoSky]

We have large front and back lawns and doing the no mow may the grass is lush and imo flowers, bees, insects and birds visiting are fantastic. We've had goldfinches visit for the first time pecking on grass seeds and various visitors coming in for a peck about.
Our neighbour, on the other hand has started mowing his two lawns twice a week, normally does once a fortnight. PA or what? 😀
Personally couldn't care less what other people do with their gardens but it is amusing all the same.
Anyone else doing the no mow thing and if so, how's it going?

No because the long grass makes it too hard to pick up my dog poo.

Yes! Have mowed around the no-mow patch so it looks deliberate, and not just typical me being lazy.

It’s annoying my neighbours who all have identikit paving and neat borders. They chopped down a load of beautiful mature trees last year so they deserve to behold my mess

Yeah, we are! It's starting to look a bit messy now though! As a pp said very early in the thread though, our cat loves it. It's like a wee wilderness to her. (Big lawns front and back, and lots of crazy grass!)

Great not having the chore of mowing it! But it looks like the pic here!!! Lots of bees 🐝 and some butterflies 🦋 about, and ladybirds 🐞 and caterpillars! 🐛 which is lovely!!

Also have an ants nest in the one lawn 🐜 - quite far from the house thankfully!

I have NO idea why I used all those bug emojis!

My DH mowed the lawn today after a month, it was by all accounts a nightmare and filled the entire green bin.

My borders can do all the work for the wildlife, much more variety in there then in my longish grass.

I wanted to do it but only made it to the weekend before last and even in a couple of weeks it more than filled the grass bin (brown here, the green one is for recycling so putting grass in there would cause it to be passively aggressively ignored by the bin people, who could just empty the damn thing but no, one must not deviate from the bin code).

I had to cram the clippings in and that was with ignoring the weed border that's grown and a high cut. Even then I could barely get the lawnmower through it.

We're also next to to fields and a small 'neighbourhood green' which I notice has been cut twice on May by the council, so no shortage of weeds and wildflowers here anyway. Our council tend to leave their 'relaxed mowing' to roundabouts and roadside verges where the long grass and signs explaining why they haven't cut it cause hazards by obscuring oncoming traffic

we leave a certain portion wild and have bee friendly plants/ allow dandelions and bee friendly plants to grow anyway

I was until last weekend, when my awful next door neighbour threatened to tell my landlord ‘if we didn’t sort it out’. We live in a very twee village and she knows the landlord, so not got cropped.
to be frank, I’m looking forward to moving out soon!!

But the new house has plastic grass in the back garden and my first job is to rip it out and re turf. The garden looks immaculate but it’s all fake and needs to go. Next year I plan on leaving it as wild as possible to compensate!

We are doing a part and part no mow may. Front isn't being cut. So far just dandelions and long grass.

The back garden is over 100f, so we doing the first part up to the pond for the dogs and daughter to use. Pond backwards is left but my borders have also been taken over by weeds and grasses!

Partially! I realised that it was getting to a point where I wasn't going to be able to get it back under control, so I've spent 3 days strimming, then mowing the middle of the main lawn. I've left it long all round the edges, and on the other side of the house, and the wildflowers/birds are having a wow of a time!

Dh has mown paths through the garden and left lovely long swathes of grass full of ox eye daisies. Doesn’t show well in this photo.

No, because the dog won't go to the toilet if the grass is too long 🙄

@Dedodee thats a good way of doing it. Gorgeous looking garden!

We’ve been doing it. I love the wildflowers and the bees.

Yes... nearly lost the toddler in it this week
I love it.. only have a very small lawn but it's so long and lush! DH will take a strimmer to it eventually!

I have unintentionally done no mow may as I didn't order the new permit from the council and the garden waste bin is full. I will cut the front lawn today though. Before it's too much for the mower, but will leave the back until next week. We have various plants/shrubs in flower at the moment. Loads of raspberries that you can hear the buzzing when you walk past, salvia, aqueligia and others, so theres plenty of optionsfor pollinators. I also don't tend to strim much so there are patches round the edge of longer grass almost always.

Yeah!

Because all the wildlife you're gonna save in May doesn't need long grass in June!

FGS!

This is the type of eco-centric virtue signalling the world can do without.

NO MOW MAY 🙄

A bit OTT?!
We are mowing ours but surrounded by fields and hedges and my borders are full of "weeds" anyway! Dead nettle, cinquefoil, self seeding geums. Cow parsley, dandelions, cleavers, nettles, wild garlic all along the lane outside our house.

I've got an area that I don't mow until autumn, it got taken over by vetch, bugle, clover and speedwell all of which I liked so I planted some Ox eye daises and Scabious and now it's mostly flowers and not too much grass. I'm still cutting what grass there is with shears though so it doesn't get chance to seed everywhere and gives the flowers more of a chance.

I also have another area that is cut before it gets too long, plenty of flowers still though - daisies, clover, speedwell, selfheal.

What a stunning garden @Dedodee

That's a blooming beautiful garden! I 100% have garden envy right now!

No point not mowing in May and then going back to a golf green lawn for the rest of the year.

If you want more than just grass, mow far less often year round.

So far this year, had snow drops, crocus, violets, daisy's buttercups and now some wild iris & daffs but i 've been limiting the amount of mowing for many years now.

Life is too short to waste time mowing & mowers, petrol ones, are very noisy.

I just zoomed down the bottom to suggest what @Dedodee has done. Mowing a pathway and or an edge makes it look purposeful and less messy somehow. As if you’ve done it intentionally not just because your lazy and the grass has suddenly shot up.

Nope. It's not a massive garden and the dog needs somewhere to poo where I can find them again to pick them up. If the garden was bigger and/or more wild in character I would totally leave the grass to get long and just mow pathways through it.

However, we do garden for the wildlife, mostly - with lots of pollinator-friendly plants in the deep, well packaged and not-obsessively-tidied borders, the pond and little nooks where we pile leaf litter or twigs etc.

We joke that our lush little spot looks like an oasis when you look out from upstairs across all the sterile/blank/bland other gardens (including the "astro-turd" next door) and then come to ours.

Tbh all the people laying plastic grass are the ones who are fucking things up. People mowing their actual grass are not the problem.

Yy to the plastic grass. Have new next door neighbours and they’ve completely cleared their small back garden. Not a single living thing in there and now has about 1000 sq ft of fake grass. I wonder if they’re doing no sweep May….