Having always been a lover of wildflowers, I have attempted to sow them in our garden a few times, with limited success. Strangely, the best result was when I was living in London and sowed a packet of seeds into a pot on our balcony.
But, having read Wilding earlier this year, I decided to create wilded areas in our garden and started in April by leaving piles of dead wood, rich environments for insects and invertebrates, around the edges and leaving the grass to grow.
"Wilding" is, broadly-speaking, a hands-off approach to conservation and gardening, where the less you do, the more you are contributing to biodiversity; by leaving nature to do its thing, you end up with a space much richer in plant species and more nourishing to birds, bees and insects.
Through most of April, we left our grass untouched. Very quickly we saw the usual daisies and dandelions springing up and noticed how much activity these everyday flowers saw from bees and butterflies.
Now, just over a week into May, increasing varieties of tiny wildflowers are appearing in patches on the lawn and I’m really enjoying finding out what they are. And by getting up close and personal with these miniscule marvels and sharing my snaps on Instagram, I stumbled across a really exciting campaign that is encouraging every garden owner to give the mower a rest.
Plantlife’s citizen campaign Every Flower Counts has launched #Nomowmay, encouraging people to stop cutting the grass during May, to allow wildflowers to bloom, providing more plants for pollinators. Signing up to the campaign involves leaving the grass to grow and then, between 23rd to 31st May, counting the number of each type of open flower in one square metre of the lawn and submitting the results online. The data will give conservationists more insight into how much potential our lawns have to provide much needed nectar for wildlife. A related campaign, also run by Plantlife, concerns petitioning local authorities to encourage wildflower growth on road verges, by cutting back less regularly.
The context for this kind of campaigning is stark reading. Since the 1930s, we have lost around 97 percent of our wildflower meadows in the UK and yet they are one of our most diverse habitats, containing around 40 species per square metre. On a summer day, one acre of wildflower meadow can contain 3 million flowers, producing around 1kg of nectar sugar, enough for 96,000 honeybees a day. Which is why our lawns and verges could prove to be so important in tackling loss of biodiversity and climate change. There are nearly 500,000 kilometres of rural road verge and 15 million gardens in the UK. Just imagine if all these spaces were enabled to flourish!
Last year’s Every Flower Counts campaign, saw 203 different flower species identified in our lawns and resulted in the first ever National Nectar Score showing that the average lawn produced 12g of nectar sugar a day – enough to support 1,088 honeybees. A surprise result was that, although areas of unmown grass were more diverse in species, areas that were cut every four weeks were much higher in nectar production. So, it seems that the way forward is to incorporate both approaches for the maximum benefit to wildlife. Plantlife calls this a “Mohican” cut – a combination of short and long grass.
All the images in this post were snapped in my garden, after just a few weeks of watching the grass grow, but there are already at least four other species out there I haven't been able to identify yet. I'm feeling hopeful that by embracing No Mow May, nature in our garden will soon surpass the glories of my little London pot display. If you feel inspired, here's how you can do something positive today to help wildlife in your area or backyard:
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