Let It Grow; Reduce the Mow

By Mike Gadd | June 6, 2024 |

Leave your grass to grow or set aside a patch of your lawn to allow a wonderful array of wild plants to flower and flourish. This floral diversity provided by a more relaxed mowing regime provides a rich food source for a wealth of wildlife through the summer.

Leaving grass to grow a little longer will have huge benefits to your environment and to wildlife. Less mowing encourages wildflowers to grow in your lawn and this is beneficial to pollinating insects such as hoverflies, bees and butterflies. Wildflowers also provide food for other insects such as beetles, spiders and grasshoppers, and other creatures such as birds and small mammals.

See photos below of some gardens in our Green Group:

Oregano loving the cracks in this patio/pathed area. Leaving gaps in similar areas can generate a whole host of different plants and is easy to manage in high traffic areas if needed.

Insects and plants love it if you leave a driveway to grow naturally.

This area was never going to make a good lawn and was a continual battle against moss and 'weeds'. Adding some wildflower seed and letting it grow has made a wonderful garden to watch amazing insects and flowers flourish.

Cutting just parts of a lawn such as along paths help to give a neater edge and allow daisies and clover to flourish in the centre which gives the best of both worlds here.

Creating pathways of cut grass can create interest such as this simple maze for kids to play.

Lovely carpet of wildflowers benefit from not mowing this lawn.

A selection of plants that have sprung up in no-mow sections of gardens in Boston Spa. Many of these plants like the bee orchid have been dormant in the seed bed for many years.

Bee Orchid at Boston Spa Academy

Red Clover

Mexican Fleabane

Buttercups

Bluebells

Cowslips

Musk Mallow

To help promote volume and variety, collect your own seeds and distribute them in your garden or elsewhere. Here, I'm gathering yellow rattle seeds. This is a parasitic plant that feeds on grass roots, so suppresses the grass to allow more flowers to take over.