Bored with manicured lawns, some homeowners adopt No Mow May all year long

[littlemissmartypants]

KRISTIN M. HALL
Updated 1:21 PM EDT, May 22, 2025

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — No Mow May encourages homeowners to stash the lawn mower each spring and let flowers and grass grow for pollinators and water retention. And if your neighbor’s lawn already looks like a wildflower field most of the time, it could be more intentional than passersby might assume.

The movement has expanded to “Let It Bloom June” and the fall version: “Leave the leaves.” Conservation and horticulture groups say year-round low-mowing while selectively leaving native plants to grow can save huge amounts of drinking water and lead to lasting and impactful ecological changes.

When Amanda Beltranmini Healen moved into her Nashville ranch house in 2016, the yard had been manicured for sale: a walnut tree, roses from a home improvement store and short grass. So she experimented, first with a 10-by-10-foot patch where she dug up the grass and sowed native seeds. Then she planted goldenrods in the culvert near the street, and let more of her yard grow tall without mowing.
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https://apnews.com/article/no-mow-may-lawns-pollinators-3025eb0c6c2a127da649a02bbcf06d22

[Irish_Dem]

1. As the planet heats and water is scarce, manicured lawns will not be sustainable.

[moonshinegnomie]

2. i tore up the hell strip in my yard

teh strip betweem teh sidewalk and teh strret.
replaced it with native plants and pollinators

I want to do it to the whole yard but its cost prohibitive right now and im well past teh age to do it myself

[rsdsharp]

3. Apparently they're going to have "bale it" June.

[justaprogressive]

4. HAAHAHAHA!

I listen to other people's lawnmowers and take another pull from my Guinness...

and gaze happily at the ornamental trees, shrubs, and flowers. scattered in the long grass.

It's bliss I tell you!

[bucolic_frolic]

5. I only mow the high spots, and dodge native wildflowers.

Some years I didn't mow til June. This year is a growth festival.

[Autumn]

6. My dandelions are a foot tall. I'm loving it.

[flashman13]

7. I gave up on mowing the grass about five years ago.

I live in a part of the country that once the weather warms and there are spring rains the growth explodes into luxurious thick green. I have let the dandelins have their way. Right now the yard is lush green and yellow.

You can't keep a lawn looking like a golf course without herbacides, pesticides and fertlizer. I have two cats and a free range bunny that live in the yard. I feed the bunny during the winter, but during the warm weather she browses on all the greens in the yard. I am not going to expose my animals and myself to chemicals. Then when the lawn dries up and turns brown in July (I don't bother trying to keep it green because the cost of watering has become prohibitive) I mow the lawn. In the fall the yard cuttings and leaves go into the garden as mulch. I also have gone no till organic in the garden. I have much less problem with weeds, huge numbers of earth worms and my produce is better than ever. As a bonus I also now have swarms of bees, both domestic and wild. I wish I had started this years ago.

It seems to be spreading because my neighbors on both sides of me no longer use chemicals and are also not mowing until the dry weather.

[Attilatheblond]

8. Recently read article about unusually high incidence of Parkinsons among people living near golf courses

Researchers suspect the heavy doses of various chemicals used to maintain solid grass golf courses.

You are wise to avoid all the chemicals required to keep lawn lush green grass mono-culture!

[Warpy]

9. "Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't" Has "How to Kill your Lawn" videos

I didn't see them until I"d done the murder, myself, but I never could see the advantage of pouring scarce and expensive water on lawn grass just for the pkeasure of mowing it in triple digit heat.

I put drought tolerant plants at the foundation and just waited to see if some native plants would pop up. A few did.

I wass a pioneer. Three years later, there was only one lawn on the block. It was in deep shade in triple digit heat, so I guess the guy didn't mind mowing it.

[Rhiannon12866]

10. I wish my neighbors would adopt that, someone is always mowing or trimming or chain sawing or leaf blowing

Most of them have riding mowers.

[NNadir]

11. I remember when my son was eight or nine, I took him for a walk around our yard to count the number of species.

I think we hit over 50. I do mow, but not often, and if I see a particularly interesting plant, I mow around it, especially if it's a seedling for some kind of tree. (Usually the deer eat the seedlings, but I've had a few trees grow to more than 5 meters over the years.)

I'm not sure my neighbors are happy with this approach, but I am.

[NickB79]

12. Letting your yard go wild is rarely that beneficial to the ecosystem

Unfortunately, more often than not the lawn is colonized by non-native invasive species that do more to support honeybees (a non-native, potentially invasive species itself) than the native bee species.

The best thing you could do is intentionally kill a patch of lawn and seed in with a native seed mix. You could kill the grass with plastic tarping to cook it in summer (solarization), but that can take a full year. Or, an application of Round-Up can do it in a week. Yes, I know that might be controversial, but IMO the downside of a single, judicious herbicide application is more than offset by the long term ecological benefit that a flourishing native prairie patch provides, especially if you have deep-rooted weeds like thistle in your lawn.

Also, make sure you find a seed mix that's specifically native species to your region. Anything sold at a big store like Home Depot labeled "wildflowers" should be avoided, because they typically use non-native flower seeds in the mix. I highly recommend MNL and Prairie Moon for quality seed mixes.

I started converting parts of my 1.5 acre property to Midwest prairie restoration about 10 yr ago, and now have a solid quarter acre worth of prairie patches, along with a 5x5 and 10x10 pond I dug for wildlife. At last count, I documented over 50 species of native grasses and forbs growing. They stay green even in the worst drought years too with minimal watering. The yard is mobbed with butterflies, frogs, toads, songbirds and native bees all summer long.