Return of the No-Mow-Month Meme

UPDATE: More assessments on the no-mow-month campaign since publication of this post:

• A spokesperson for the National Wildlife Federation said, on in April 2024 “A Way To Garden” podcast, “We’ve really been leaning into and pushing what we call “grow beyond No-Mow May. The reason is in certain areas this might make sense but it’s not a universal approach.  Many areas don’t have the kind of growing green turf seasons, for one thing. The other thing is that the only beneficial is if the lawn has a substantial number of noninvasive wildflowers that actually benefit pollinators.  If you’re just not growing monoculture turfgrass, then nothing’s really happening for the wildlife.” Podcast host: “You’re just getting longer monoculture turfgrass.” NWF: “Exactly, which sadly can attract ticks and other kinds of pests that you don’t want. So it’s not a universal solution.
• This article in Real Simple includes a quote from Dr. Doug Tallamy:  “Dr. Tallamy sees little logic in letting lawns grow longer for a few weeks. If people simply let their grass grow for a month and then revert to a clipped green monoculture, they are teasing pollinators with short-term snacks followed by starvation, he said.”
• From Jessica Damiano Associated Press gardening columnist: “My question is what happens on June 1? All those pollinators and beneficial insects that you’ve been sheltering for a month with all these good intentions, they’re going to get shredded up with that first mowing. And I’ve heard horror stories about people accidentally mowing over bunny nests in the high grass that they didn’t see.  So that sounds horrific to me. I can’t even imagine that. And what about weeds that are taking advantage of the opportunity to take hold during the month?   They’re not going to just disappear when you mow your grass. So I suspect that people who are more likely to use herbicides in June than they would otherwise, after a month of not mowing. So that’s an unintended consequence, I think.  And then there’s bees and other pollinators that have gotten used to finding food in the lawn for an entire month.  They have memories.  They remember and they form habits and they keep going back to that lawn for food and then all of a sudden the buffet is gone and they get confused. And when they’re confused, predators can more easily take advantage of them. Maybe we’re not helping them as much as we think we are with that whole movement. I mean the movement has good intentions but I don’t believe it’s well thought out. I believe it’s become really more marketing; it’s just become like a trend that people are just jumping on the bandwagon without thinking it through.” (On the 6/15/24 episode of GardenDC Podcast.)
• Read Benjamin Vogt’s very compressive assessment and ways to *really* make a difference here, for Better Homes and Gardens.
• From the wire service AP News: “Good intentions, bad approach, critics say.”
• From Maryland Extension, a big-picture assessment with details about clovers and other lawn replacements.
• Elizabeth Licata in the Buffalo News: “No Mow May? No thank you.”

The No-Mow Month campaign (April or May) arrived in our world last spring, when I called it  “The no-good, terrible lawn-care advice from the Xerces Society,” citing concerns that it could both harm lawns and encourage ticks. 

My Rant partner Elizabeth added her skepticism of the campaign in her post, focusing on more effective ways for gardeners to provide for pollinators. I so agree with her conclusion:

But you know what I most dislike about all these directives coming down from various wildlife organizations (some with more credibility than others)? I don’t garden by meme and I am not going to encourage others to do it. Let’s put some thought into gardening. Let’s exercise our creativity as well as our common sense. Let’s be gardeners. 

It’s been a year and the campaign is back in my town, so time for an update. I’ll start by admitting that I didn’t document the progress of flowers on the no-mow lawns of my neighbors, as it seemed too intrusive. Plus, I can’t ID enough of the local lawn weeds for my observations to count for much.

Instead, I offer assessments of the campaign by some knowledgeable advocates for wildlife.

In Rewilding Magazine

Three authors of a book about creating habitat posted “The Surprising Downside of #NoMowMay” in Rewilding Magazine that:

There’s huge value in challenging monocultural lawns and the enormous ecological damage they have caused, but offering a feel-good moment of aesthetic rebellion risks obscuring, and even undermining, the bigger goal.

Instead of encouraging #LazyLawns what we need to do, urgently, is to steward, tend and nurture landscapes for native biodiversity and ecological integrity. A month of long lawns filled with dandelions and other non-native weedy species just doesn’t cut it. It’s the ecological equivalent of opening a fast-food restaurant on every corner – for a short amount of time. At best, burgers and fries for a while, but not a sustained full-service menu of healthy nutrition and habitat for pollinators.

While we need to loosen the grip of the lawn on our collective landscape imaginings, here’s what the little research done to date on dandelions tells us. Dandelion has allelopathic pollen, a scientific term that basically means the pollen of dandelions can reduce reproductive success in native wildflowers, disrupting the native plant communities it invades. Another study showed that queen bumblebees (some of the early emerging wild bees that pro-dandelion campaigns say dandelions help) resorted to eating their own eggs when fed a diet of protein-deficient dandelion pollen.

Causing queen bees to eat their own eggs? Damn, just when dandelions were starting to be forgiven for their status as weeds. She concludes with a plea for less lawn in favor of “densely planted native plants.”

From Benjamin Vogt of Monarch Gardens

Then GardenRant contributor Benjamin Vogt   posted “Native Plants Are Not No Maintenance, And No Mow May is Unwise” on his blog The Deep Middle – Monarch Gardens

From Iowa State

In their “Tips for Participating in No Mow” we find these revealing topic headers:

• It Will Take a Lot of Effort to Get the Lawn Back Under Control,
• You Will Encourage the Growth of More Weedy and Invasive Plants
• Consider an Alternative to No Mow May – Participate in Mow Less May

Some small preliminary studies show that mowing every two weeks can still significantly increase bee population size. So instead of No Mow May, participate in Mow Less May. Mowing less frequently can support the cause and avoid many of the drawbacks.  Most flowering plants in lawns, like dandelion and clover, flower even with mowing. By extending the time in between mowings from every 7 days to every 10-14 days, you can continue to manage your landscape in a way that supports the pollinators with more flowers and avoids many of the drawbacks such as citations, undesirable weeds, and stress to the lawn.

Mowing less frequently will require you to set the mower height high to avoid removing too much leaf material at once. The good news is that mowing grass at a taller height promotes a healthier lawn. Mowing at a height of 3.5 to 4 inches promotes a larger, more drought-tolerant root system, can help shade the soil surface reducing undesirable weeds, and allows you to use less pesticide and herbicide on the lawn because the turf is healthier.

The author adds these suggestions:

• Create a Well-Designed Pollinator Garden
• Consider Eliminating the Lawn

Consider eliminating the lawn altogether and replacing it with plants or garden spaces that don’t require frequent maintenance and support native insects and wildlife. Replacing turf with perennials, groundcovers, shrubs, and trees can reduce water consumption, pesticides, and fertilizers while increasing soil organic matter, building soil quality, and helping to retain and infiltrate stormwater.

We’re seeing a pattern here, right? Mow Less Often, which is also part of Cornell’s low-maintenance lawn-care advice, summarized in the very sensible meme “Do Less!”

Press Inquiries on the Hot Topic of Lawn-Hate

I was surprised in the last week by two requests for interviews about lawn – specifically, the anti-lawn message we’re seeing so often these days.

A writer for Science News wanted to talk about the movement to get rid of lawns, about which I had lots to say and enough links to fill her reading list for weeks. What surprised me is that she was pursuing the lawn-replacement angle for a story about reactions to climate change. I opined to her that the focus of anti-lawn message was on pollinating insects, not climate change. I referred her to this 2007 article about gardening and climate change, which emphasized the need for plants that are adaptable. 

Anyway, I had a great time zooming with her and look forward to a promised repeat.

Then a reporter for NBC, after finding my rant about the No-Mow campaign, asked to interview me on the topic. It may surprise readers to learn that I turned down that request because (honestly) I don’t like being on camera but also because I’d had some unpleasant encounters with local proponents and didn’t want to stir them up again.

In one such encounter I was told that I obviously didn’t GET it.  See, I had cited U.Maryland advice about lawn care practices that raised concerns about the impact of the no-mow month on lawn health – an impact that didn’t concern them because “We don’t want anyone to have lawns.”

So now I get it. Her group wants lawns to fail, hoping that’ll lead more people to get rid of them. Too bad details like that don’t fit in a 3-word meme.

My Town

Curiously, though my town distributes No-Mow literature and signs, it follows the practice in only a few out-of-the-way spots. Yesterday I noticed mowers making the usual rounds everywhere else.