No Mow May: A Starting Point, Not the Finish Line

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Guest Information

Matthew Shepherd, typically a Bug Banter co-host, is joining as a guest for this episode to talk about the trendy No Mow May campaign. Matthew has been with the Xerces Society for a quarter century, working on pollinator conservation in towns and cities. Emily May, Xerces Society pollinator conservation specialist, is filling in as a special guest co-host. 

Show Notes & Links

In this episode, we discuss the trendy No Mow May campaign. There are benefits to the campaign and mowing less, but the conversations and continuing conservation efforts are where the real impact lies. 

• Bee City USA's No Mow May campaign
• Blog: "No Mow May: A Gateway To Better Landscape Management For Bees"
• No Mow May webinar

Transcript

Rachel: Welcome to Bug Banter with the Xerces Society where we explore the world of invertebrates and how to help these extraordinary animals. If you want to support our work go to xerces.org/give.

Rachel: Hi, I'm Rachel Dunham in Missoula, Montana.

Emily: Hello, I'm Emily May in Cornwall, Vermont.

Rachel: There's a new voice with us today, special guest co-host Emily May. Emily May is an entomologist, a gardening guru, and a pollinator conservation specialist at the Xerces Society. Welcome, Emily. I'm so excited to have you co-hosting with me today.

Emily: I'm so excited to be here. I love this podcast. And it's spring here in Vermont and I've just come inside from tuning up my lawn mower out in the shed. I can't get can't wait to get out and start mowing down those pesky violets in my lawn. Just kidding.

Rachel: If you get tired of mowing your lawn every week in the spring, I have good news. You don't have to. And the bees and fritillary butterflies, will thank you for it.

Rachel: Mowing your lawn less frequently can provide habitat for pollinators, especially in early spring. But is that enough? What can we do to turn No Mow May into meaningful conservation of pollinators and other wildlife?

Emily: Joining us today to talk about the trendy, No Mow May campaign is Bug Banter co-host Matthew Shepherd. Matthew has been with the Xerces Society for a quarter century working on pollinator conservation in towns and cities.

Emily: Welcome. It's nice to have you join us from the other side.

Matthew: Yeah, no, that's gonna be quite an experience being on this side, I have to say.

Rachel: Hi Matthew.

Matthew: Hi Rachel.

Rachel: To start, can you briefly explain the No Mow May campaign? How does mowing your lawn less exactly help bees and other pollinators?

Matthew: Yeah, No Mow May is really simple in concept. You don't mow for a few weeks in the spring, flowers bloom, provide foraging for bees, you have happy bees, happy plants, happy people, and that's good, right?

Matthew: But inevitably such a simple thing is not quite so straightforward. It's not actually a simple as that when you start applying it. One of the things with No Mow May is that it began in Britain. It was the Plantlife charity in Britain that started it.

Matthew: And it works great. Britain's a relatively small island. Mild climate and May is probably a good month during which the lawn's just beginning to grow, it's relatively early in spring and it applies to most of the country. But here in the United States it's not quite so simple. May is not spring everywhere, you know, in a country the size of the United States.

Matthew: Go into Canada if you want. There's no reason why you can't do this in Canada. You know, your lawn will start growing in different times and so No Mow May could be No Mow April or No Mow March or No Mow Spring maybe.

Matthew: And also, if all you're doing is allowing your grass to grow for a few weeks and then powering up your lawn mower. Then, all you have is a few flowers for a few weeks and then you go back exactly to where you were before, which is not much habitat at all.

Matthew: So I think it's great. It's a good start and there are definitely some benefits. People have done surveys of the flowers that that grow in lawns. I mean a lot of the surveys have looked at dandelions and white Dutch clover.

Matthew: You know, one study in Kentucky found more than 2 dozen species of bees that would forage on the white Dutch clover and the dandelions in lawns.

Matthew: Another series of studies have been done looking at Massachusetts and they found, I think it was more than 90 species of bees altogether on the lawn flowers. And that was more than just the spring, I have to admit.

Matthew: And there are other studies that have been done elsewhere in Europe where they've looked at the intensity of mowing and whether that helps wildlife. So there definitely are some benefits from it, but like I say, it's kind of limited in a way because not only if you're only not mowing for a few weeks, do you have a really short period of benefit? But also if you stop and think about it. Conservation for native species shouldn't rely upon weeds.

Matthew: I really would like, you know, encourage people to get beyond the idea of just letting a few weeds grow and somehow going, whoosh, save the bees.

Emily: Right. I remember seeing that study come out for Massachusetts and it sounds like reduction of mowing throughout the season, not just in the spring, is valuable for letting some flowers grow in your lawn.

Emily: So what about if somebody wanted to keep some of their lawn mown all year long? Is there some kind of compromise that would still provide habitat for bees?

Matthew: Yes. For sure, I mean. The great thing about No Mow May and the reason why we jumped into it is partly because we looked at it and went, wow. This is great. Really good start. It's also attracting a lot of discussion, debate, and huge media interest in it.

Matthew: It was one of our Bee City USA affiliates, partnered with the Bee Campus USA affiliate in Appleton, Wisconsin who started it and because we run the Bee City, Bee Campus program, people started coming to us saying, oh, this is great. How do we do it? What benefits do they bring, etc., etc. So that's why we started getting involved.

Matthew: And as No Mow May, people are very emotional about their lawns. Some people are very attached to them. Some people really don't like them. Some people spend hours and hours manicuring and trying to make them look perfect. And some people don't mow at all. So it's finding, you know, that lawns are a really great topic to start a conversation about.

Matthew: So yeah. Reduction of mowing. As you said, the Massachusetts studies showed that reducing the intensity of mowing, maybe only mowing once every 2 or 3 weeks seem to be good in terms of balancing having it look like a lawn and having some flowers that the bees and other insects can benefit from.

Matthew: But if you want to, you know, expand habitat in your yard, you're probably going to do away with lawn altogether because there are other things that could bring greater benefit. But in particular with lawns being mowed. You know, our gardens provide all sorts of things for us.

Matthew: They're not a wilderness. It's not a natural area for most people. It's a garden, so we use gardens for you know, throwing a ball around in, having drinks with our friends, enjoying our morning coffee, letting our pets run around and exercise. So you're going to have all of those things in your garden.

Matthew: And so there will be some areas where for sure you're going to want to mow. And to keep it short to make it accessible and give it those uses that you want. But maybe that's not everywhere. You know, maybe you have a large lawn. And you only need to mow half of it or a quarter of it, you know.

Matthew: And so most people can find a way that a balance, a compromise, so that they can get what they want, the uses from their garden that their family needs. But also having some space for wildlife.

Rachel: So Matthew, one of the reasons folks may not want to participate in No Mow May is due to fire danger, especially in the west where you are. Is there any way to participate without increasing the risk of fire around homes and in communities?

Matthew: Here in the west with what we're experiencing now with extended droughts and hotter summers and shifting climates and so on. People really are concerned about fire. So there's nothing that you should be doing that's going to increase any potential risk to yourself or your house.

Matthew: There is well established guidance on how you can manage a landscape, around your house. With establishing clear zones, for example, within the first five or six feet of any structure, you try and keep that that clear of any taller vegetation.

Matthew: You know, then there's the next zone for another 25 or 30 feet out from the house, for example, where you're going to avoid dense planting, and so what that means is like right around your house keep your grass short, you know.

Matthew: That may be an area where if you are irrigating, focus irrigation there so that it's moister and wetter and less likely to burn. The next area out then, you know. That intermediate zone, the normal recommendation is don't have vegetation more than two feet high.

Matthew: But that's great. I mean, that does mean that you've got a chance of having longer grass out there, for example, or maybe you're not having grass, maybe you're having other vegetation but shorter stature plants. And then beyond that there are fewer restrictions. And so there are ways in which you can manage your homes and your landscape to do that.

Matthew: I mean, where I live, I'm in the suburbs and I don't have a big plot. So I mean, I don't think I have any part of my garden that's more than 30 feet from a house. So in theory, if I was totally following the fire safety, I wouldn't have anything at all. But I do.

Matthew: I'm in a moister part of western Oregon. But that's not to say that we don't have fire risk here. And when they're with huge fires, just, maybe five years ago. There really was concern about the fires burning into some of the suburbs around Portland and unfortunately, we've all seen the news where other communities have been burnt through.

Matthew: And so fire risk is very definitely a reality these days and so, like so many things, we're always going to encourage people to make their gardens, make the landscapes, better for wildlife but not at risk to yourself.

Emily: I have a similar question. Up here in Vermont, the other side of the country, you know, I hear a lot about ticks. I hear about things like my kids are out there, my dogs out there in the lawn.

Emily: I don't want them to come back in with ticks. So what can folks do to consider and mitigate this concern and still have pollinator habitat in their yards?

Matthew: Yeah, I might have some fire risk where I am, but strangely I managed to live in a corner of the United States where we don't have to worry about ticks. So I don't have any direct experience of managing a landscape to minimize ticks.

Matthew: But from what I understand. You can do that because ticks seem to prefer cooler, damper, shadier areas, you know, more like a forest edge or a hedgerow, for example. So, but it comes down to the same way that with fire safety you can have zones around your house to protect and minimize fire.

Matthew: You can also have kind of zones or areas within your yard. You can divide your yard up according to the kind of activity that you might want. Kids play areas, play structures, for example, you don't want to put them out there in a shady corner and you know near long grass, for example.

Matthew: Because you're putting the children interacting with areas where there's likely to be more ticks. So, you know, decide which areas of your garden would be appropriate for people activities and which areas would be more appropriate and you prioritize for habitat.

Matthew: You also can, you know, if you have longer grass or a meadow, you know, maybe you have a path through it. Because you need to get to the shed at the end of your garden or the gates or whatever.

Matthew: Make sure that the path is wide enough. You know, don't have it where it's going to be so narrow that you're going to be brushing past the taller vegetation where ticks might be.

Matthew: Make sure that you have basically a clear zone to walk through safely. Some information and guidance that's out there talks about establishing barriers. You know, say, you know, you're the area where your dog might run or your kids might throw a ball around. And the longer vegetation, you know, maybe a 2-foot wide area of bark chips. So that there's something that's very distinctly not attractive to ticks and then the ticks are, they don't have like little backpacks, you know, they're scampering across.

Matthew: They're not going to trek out too far from the areas where they're living. So having an area that's inhospitable to ticks can be, quite literally, I mean a physical barrier that will deter them from going further.

Emily: So Matthew, you’ve already hinted at this a bit that No Mow May is not the end-all-be-all for pollinator conservation. And we've gotten some pushback on this campaign, that it isn’t helping bees and other pollinators but rather trendy and not making a meaningful difference. So can you talk about that a bit? What is your response?

Matthew: As I said, if all you're doing is not mowing for a few weeks and letting weeds grow, then yeah, that's really not a great endpoint for conservation. There has been some people pushing back. We've had people pushing from both sides. You know there are people who love lawns and don't want to see lawns go weedy.

Matthew: There are people who are concerned about pests and, you know, worried that their house value will decline if their neighbors yard looks untidy, for example. But there's also the other side there are people who would love to just get rid of lawns entirely. And would love to see, you know, native meadows in all of these areas instead. And I mean, yeah, I would love to see that too.

Matthew: That's the problem. It's like with some of the people pushing back against – I'm like, yeah, I agree with you totally. You know, I would love if we got rid of lawns.

Matthew: There are more than 40 million acres of turf grass in this country and about two thirds of that is in private gardens. Which is a remarkable acreage of land that doesn't bring any particular environmental benefit.

Matthew: I mean, and I'm just talking about wildlife here. I mean, if you think about the pollution that comes from the pesticides and the fertilizer on that and those wash away down the drains and to our local creeks.

Matthew: You can think about the amount of water that gets poured onto these areas to try just to try and keep them looking green. You think about the energy, the carbon footprint of all those. And so there are lots of reasons why doing away with the lawn would be better environmentally.

Matthew: But we also have to recognize that we're talking about gardens. And so people want - there are lots of different things they want from their gardens. And so, you know, we're encouraging people to take that step. To move incrementally away from the pristine manicured lawn towards something that does support wildlife.

Matthew: It may not be the perfect habitat, but if we can get 10, 15, 20% of those 40 million acres to be less intensely managed. Keep people happy. You know, make sure that people are getting the gardens they want, but they're also supporting more wildlife. Then that seems like a reasonable step to take.

Rachel: Yeah, it seems like, a nice, like you said, a small step and yeah, it's not the end-all-be-all, but it is helping. And especially when you think about the scale of the acreage that you mentioned.

Rachel: That's a lot of lawn and I think we always think green is good no matter what, but not all green is good in providing habitat.

Rachel: So yeah, so you've talked now a few times about wanting people to do away with their lawn and go beyond No Mow May, that there are other things that people can do. What are some of those other actions that people can do to conserve pollinators not only just in their own yard, but maybe people who don't have yards, but also in their communities?

Matthew: Yeah, I mean. If you're going to look at habitat, you're going to want habitat that supports the entire life cycle. You know, we think about butterflies, we probably all know the basic life cycle of butterflies, egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, adult.

Matthew: And a lot of times when people thinking about butterfly gardening, all they're thinking about is nectar plants to support the adult and not somewhere where the eggs can lay, the plants that the caterpillars eat and, you know, somewhere for the chrysalis to shelter.

Matthew: And so we need to be looking at our gardens to provide habitat all year. And the same, it's the same for the bees, you know, they have an egg, they have the larvae, they have the pupa, they have the adult.

Matthew: And most of that the life span of the majority of our bees is spent as an egg, larvae, or pupae, and primarily pupae, in a nest somewhere that may be inside a hollow twig or stem. It may be a little tunnel in the ground. And so, you know, if we're thinking about gardening and we're thinking only about flowers, then how are we supporting the rest of that?

Matthew: There are lots of things we can do in our gardens to support the entire life cycle. Obviously, flowers. Yeah, we need flowers and you can either do that by making your lawn into a meadow or part of your lawn into a meadow, or you can just do away with a lawn and have flower borders instead.

Matthew: You can also be keeping stems, you can be keeping log piles, you can be retaining leaves through the fall. So that you're beginning to bring incrementally some of these tiny little kinds of microhabitats back into our landscapes.

Matthew: Beyond gardens, you know, if you live in an apartment. You can do an amazing amount of stuff on your balcony or your deck. Or your front porch and you can grow all sorts of flowers in planters. You can introduce logs and other things onto your deck if you want. I know somebody who's doing that on their balcony. It's quite impressive what they've managed to create and how many species of bees and butterflies they've now recorded.

Matthew: But you know, obviously if you don't have space at all of your own, then there are things you can do in how you choose produce at the grocery store, for example. You know, you could be choosing produce that's going to have a smaller impact on the environment, whether that's organic or something like the Bee-Better Certified label that's increasingly available.

Matthew: You can also take action. Speak up, you know, talk to your local parks department about what are they doing about their lawns, their grass in their parks, you know. And so they're always going to be things that you can do.

Matthew: And particularly if you're, if you are thinking you want to go talk to your parks department about how they manage their lawns, you might like to know that reducing the intensity of mowing or the frequency of mowing has been shown to reduce the costs by about a third.

Matthew: So that's one thing that's often... Agency managers... I don't want to call them bean counters because that's not very nice, but, you know, they're watching the bottom line because they have to balance, and how do you maintain all these areas of land within the budget you have. So cost is definitely an issue.

Matthew: But they've also been studies done where they've talked to park users and say well what do you think? Are you happy with the look of this? And you know remarkably high percentages, like 95% plus of people, really like seeing flowers in grass. It's made them feel like that their parks are doing a good thing.

Matthew: And so there are, you know, there are things that local city could do. In tune with No Mow May and reducing intensity of lawns. And there are things that you, we, or each of us as local community members could do to try and shift how our public spaces are maintained.

Emily: I love that. Thank you, Matthew. I'm going to be honest here. I was not tuning up my lawn mower at the beginning of this episode. One of the things that I think about too, I think I resonate with that. The cost issue of maintaining a lawn in that way.

Emily: One of the things that's really, appealing about native plant gardening is that it takes, it does take a cost upfront to get that started, but then over time it costs less both in time and in other resources that you might be putting into it because, you know, ideally you're using these plants that are locally adapted and right for your conditions.

Emily: So one of the things that, you know, I think about in terms of managing larger spaces, I have about two acres to manage and it's incremental progress. It's not take out all the lawn in one go or let it all go one year.

Emily: It's I'm going to tackle this spot first and then I'm going to tackle that spot next year and over time I'm going to develop a real system and an ecosystem for wildlife in in my yard. So it's not all at once. It's not all or nothing. It's not end-all-be-all. That's one of the things that's great about pollinator conservation. There's a spectrum of all these different actions that you can be taking.

Emily: One of the other things that came up for me thinking about what you just said is that I sometimes hear about someone wanting to participate in No Mow May or other gardening practices like Leave the Leaves, Save the Stems, that kind of thing, but their community might have rules about letting their lawn go unmown or having things standing over the winter.

Emily: So what do you recommend for folks that are dealing with restrictive HOA covenants and similar types of situations?

Matthew: An important issue in not just within HOAs, but also with some of the cities that have weed ordinances. Because obviously, you know, particularly with the weed ordinances, you really don't want to have an abandoned derelict plot next to you. I get that. And so, but at the moment some of the weed ordinances are written in ways that kind of make wildlife gardening illegal.

Matthew: I mean, I don't think anybody should be outlawed just because they want to support bees and butterflies. And you're, you know, you specifically asked about HOAs and that there are issues, I mean, at HOAs. I actually used to live in a neighborhood with an HOA, which I discovered because I started getting notices about my lawn.

Matthew: And when I pushed back, and explained why my law was like that, they were like – Oh do you want to join the board? Okay. I don't think so. But I mean, it’s one of the interesting things, is that there normally are ways in which you can adjust how you're managing your landscape, your grass in particular to meet the needs of the HOA.

Matthew: And so, I mean, you may need to keep the grass short in the front and then you can let your backyard grow longer. Often HOAs are more concerned about the street view, and less about what's behind. And sometimes that's referred to the mullet approach because it's like neat tidy at the front and long at the back.

Matthew: But you can also start reducing the lawn area that you have, you may be able to take out grass and put in flowering borders and your flowering borders can be full of native plants and all sorts of great features for you that will support wildlife but also meet the landscaping requirements of your HOA.

Matthew: And then of course, a lot of these HOAs, I mean, I didn't get on the board when I was in a neighborhood with an HOA. But there are people on boards doing great things, and they're often younger and they're more interested themselves in how can we change the landscaping rules.

Matthew: And so there's this kind of generational change happening now that you come across in some HOAs. And so why not start a conversation with your HOA about the landscaping rules?

Rachel: Thank you, Matthew. Great question, Emily.

Rachel: So do we, do you, does Xerces have any resources on No Mow May? Where can people go for more information?

Matthew: At the moment most of the resources we have are on the Bee City USA website. You can, the URL is beecityusa.org. Or I bet if you just start typing into your search engine, “No Mow May,” it'll pop up because it's been a very popular page. And so you can go there and you will find information about No Mow May. Resources including some social media materials and suggestions for how you can talk to your little community about it.  

Rachel: We will be sure to put those links in the show notes.

Emily: I would love to know Matthew what inspired you to go into invertebrate conservation? Did you, in the in the 1990s stop mowing your lawn and suddenly noticed lots of insects? What happened? How did you get here?

Matthew: Now it's funny, yeah, back in the 1990s I was making wildlife gardens back in the 1980s. I was doing that because I've been pursuing this for a long time. But no, I started in conservation.

Matthew: I don't have an entomology background. That's not what I went through college studying and I came out of college having studied kind of land management and this was actually back in the 1980s when I started doing this, and I had at college, I had got involved with the conservation volunteer organizations and, you know, spent my weekends planting and clearing and maintaining and managing stuff.

Matthew: And I was like, wow, this is so cool. I wonder if I can do that as a job. And I managed to find the job and got started doing the kind of conservation management on farms and so on. And then gradually, because this was in Britain where we just don't have huge wild areas, so most of what I was managing were just small plots. I was helping the village greens, I was doing schools, I was helping farmers with planting hedgerows, or cleaning out old farm ponds and so on.

Matthew: And I just realized that so much of what I was doing eventually was revolving around the insects. You know, a meadow for its ants, a heathland for its tiger beetles. A woodland for its butterflies. And then coincidentally, someone came along and I started sharing an office with someone who did have an entomology background and he was a total beetle nerd. And that's when I was like, oh man, this is so cool.

Matthew: And now I'm working with someone who actually has more knowledge than me and so that’s how I came into insects, from the kind of land management side of it.

Matthew: But I was so fortunate when I moved to the United States to have met Melody Allen. Melody Mackey Allen, who was running the Xerces Society at the time. And met for coffee and started chatting, and we discovered that we had these connections.

Matthew: I had discovered pollinator conservation when I was working in southern England on a project where they'd for years been managing these amazing short grasslands. And had rare orchids growing there and we were spending our time, you know, like imagine the kind of idyllic sun-drenched hillside with a view across the English Channel.

Matthew: And we were there with like Q-tips and artist paintbrushes moving the pollen from one plant to another to another to another. It's like okay, we've got this habitat, but what's wrong with this picture? You know, and I was like, oh, bees, oh, pollination. Oh, native bees. Oh, they're not all honeybees and they live in the ground, and they're solitary and it's like. Boom. And that's what got me into pollination and pollinators.

Matthew: And then when I moved here to the United States. As I say, Melody who was running Xerces Society, and got involved, with pollinator conservation.

Rachel: Yeah, it's so nice to hear that story, Matthew. And thank you for everything you've done for pollinators and other invertebrates and at Xerces. Emily, thank you so much for joining us as a co-host.

Emily: It was great to be here. Really nice to sit in this chair. Getting to chat with both of you.

Matthew: Bug Banter is brought to you by the Xerces Society, a donor supported non-profit that works to protect insects and other invertebrates – the life that sustains us.

Matthew: If you’re already a donor, thank you so much. If you want to support our work go to xerces.org/donate. For information about this podcast and show notes go to xerces.org/bugbanter.