is anyone going to leave the mowing in May?

[MrsLargeEmbodied]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-61264905

Came here to say exactly this. But we’ve also run out of compost heap room so I made a grass heap: discovered yesterday it’s now a litter tray. There’s no winning!

Yes. I usually strim it when the bluebells are over (this weekend) then about once a month, but I’m not physically capable at the moment so it will have to wait until June.

it is already so long that the local cats don’t want to crap on it - it’s longer than their legs!

I leave an area wild, but have to keep main lawn short for the dog. Can't find his deposits when it's too long.

No due to the dog.
I leave the grass long around the hedges and have sown bee/butterfly flower seeds.
Front garden lawn is mowed but the flowers are wild that I collected the seeds when on country walks, so I have a bit of everything.
I'm just collecting some old pallets next week to build a bug hotel in an unused area of the back garden.
I try to do my bit in other ways.

@SarahAndQuack I know, I was really saddened by it. Poor little bird.

My husband likes to keep the lawn really short and weed free but we've got another area that we've been encouraging as a wildflower meadow that's only cut twice a year, just a path mown through. Hundreds of daisies at the moment.

I did this last year and we had hundreds of not thousands of grasshoppers! It was a real sanctuary for them.

The only downside is the cats will use the long grass as a litter tray so you have to be extra careful when re-mowing

We want to but our landlord isn't happy about us and often prompts us to mow our lawn or says she'll get the farmhand to do it (we live in a cottage on her farm next to animal fields so she can always see it). So for a quiet life we mow it although we haven't yet and it's looking gorgeous. Will be sad when DP mows it in a couple of weeks.

*isn't happy about it

We leave part of ours all summer, and mow it once tge wildflowers are done, so that it's nice and short for primrose time. Just mow a windy path up to the compost heaps, and around the edges. Definite increase in butterflies, and the cats love stalking through it. I have put some ox eye daisies in this year, there's already a riot of other stuff..

The flat bit near the house gets cut more often so we can sit out, and there's an intermediate area between the two areas, which is cut a few times.

Exactly on the dog poo, and ours has very soft poos (old + meds) so I’m not lifting that from long grass 🙄

I bloody hate dandelions, they make a gazillion seeds and spread too well and are too difficult to get rid of with their bloody great taproot. They're too big and their leaves go out like a rosette and kill off everything underneath and when you pull them up they are back again literally the next day. I have plenty of nice flowers that are early flowering for bees, like pulmonaria and hellebores. Dandelions are fine in a field but I don't want them. Happy with small flowers like daisies, clover, speedwell and creeping jenny through my lawn but dandelions are a no.

We have an area of lawn I mow regularly for our use and another area that won't be mown till September. It doesn't have much grass any more though though, there's a lot of vetch which the bees love and other wild flowers (and a few non wild I've added in).

Agree with this !!!

Resist the urge to "tidy," until the insects recover from winter.

This year I plan to leave unmown a half metre border around all my flower beds and trees.

Last year I tried to keep various sections unmown, but our garden is so small it looked really bad and as alot of it is in shade it did not seem to make a difference. Hopefully a half metre around the beds will make it look okay.

I’m not going to lie, I have friends who did this and it looked shit. People kept asking them if they hadn’t finished the mowing,

No, at least not round here. Too many ticks about. I pick up loads in the borders as it is, without worrying about picking them up on the grass. Not an issue though, as our garden is still full of wildlife as we have large borders, and thick hedges, surrounded by fields. We have so many mammals and birds, and insects, some quite rare, we are very lucky.

@SpringLobelia could you maybe have a corner that’s left wild, or a less visible patch say behind the shed or compost? Depends on your garden layout etc but it doesn’t need to be visible to you to be valuable.

People with cats pooing on grass… I’ve never had a cat who pooed on grass, they’ve always used the flower beds. Do you not have borders with loose soil ? Just wandering why they would do it. And all our cats have at least attempted to bury it. So grass just wouldn’t work. Or do you think you’re just not finding the ones in the borders ?

They do it in the borders too, but less so as I plant a jam-packed border so there’s not a lot of exposed soil. I haven’t asked the cats why they do it in the grass.

that is an excellent idea.
i mowed my lawn yesterday, it is very small but left a couple of nettles and a patch that is not very visible

I didn't know so many people let their dogs shit in their gardens. We always make ours use the road outside our house that we can then wash away any residue. Cats on the other hand are impossible to do anything about.

Half and half.

I am out the front but I have two dogs so out the back is more difficult as it makes it harder to clear up after them.

Yup, been doing no mow may for years now, I don't find any trouble clearing up after dog who is too old and wobbley for walks. I honestly do not care about what other people think of my garden or what they it looks like. I do mow once right at the end of April (which may have been what the council were doing, its what ours does, but sad for the blackbird) but there is also an area that I don't mow. I allow one patch of nettles too as they are so good for wildlife.

Yes

Because it's raining and I'm lazy and there are still dandelion flowers on the "lawn" for the bees. All my energy going into the veg I have growing in containers