Cruelest April provided only the most fleeting glances of spring this year.
The wild weather and predominantly cool temperatures meant that instead of tulips and dandelions, the Wisconsin spring was something we saw mostly in our news feed. The New York Times travel section hit first, with a spread from Shorewood Hills resident Anne Readel. An ecologist-turned-intellectual property lawyer, Readel reported on the No Mow May trend in Wisconsin. WPR covered it too. And if you’re still on social media there were insistent reminders to slow-roll your yard cleaning to spare pollinators.
If you haven’t caught wind of it yet, No Mow May is a British campaign. As Readel reported, Appleton, Wisconsin, was the first American city to implement it, and she helped bring it to Shorewood Hills. “The traditional American lawn is really an ecological desert,” says Readel in an interview. “It requires a lot of inputs of chemicals and water and care. And it doesn’t leave a lot of room for other species.”
Appleton is not the place you’d necessarily expect a biodiversity initiative. What happened was a curious alignment between the pandemic and the work of two Lawrence University biology professors. Israel Del Toro was beginning to explore local bee diversity. Relena Ribbons suddenly needed a research project after pandemic protocols delayed other projects. They convinced the city to relax the city’s lawn ordinance for the month of May in 2020, then watched closely.
They discovered a promising proof of concept: Unmowed lawns had three times the species richness and five times more bees overall than nearby mowed parks. Appleton made the May mowing pause permanent this year. “It shows that a tiny thing is helpful,” says Ribbons. “Imagine what we could do if people took this and leveled up. I’m trying to encourage people to rethink what you need out of your lawn.”
Last year’s drought and the generally dry winter was a nagging reminder for gardeners that we’re in the grips of a mounting climate crisis. For many scientists the extinction crisis — of which pollinator decline is just a part — ranks as a comparable planetary threat.
In the face of these existential concerns, No Mow May does feel like a tiny thing, a very small step at the start of a much longer journey.
The city of Madison has been on this road for some time. Many of your neighbors have been rewilding their yards for decades. Native plant sales are a local fixture. We’re on our way to 1,000 rain gardens, and the city’s own 2015 report on pollinator protection was propelled in no small part by Satya Rhodes-Conway, after she left the city council and before becoming mayor. The city even deployed goats on garlic mustard patrol in its conservation parks last year. New plans, driven by budget cuts, to convert a number of planted medians to turf or concrete are unfortunately a step in the wrong direction.
Madison has considered No Mow May but residents can already let their grass reach a full foot before triggering any enforcement action. The Sustainable Madison Committee discussed the initiative on April 25, sending along a recommendation that the council acknowledge it as one option among many, including a low mow May.
Maddie Dumas is among the people whose job it is to make Madison safe for pollinators and she’s about to begin her fifth summer as the greenway vegetation coordinator for city engineering. She watches over 1,600 acres of stormwater management lands to maximize biodiversity and ecosystem health.
Native plants are the focus because they have deeper root systems than typical broadleaf weeds. The roots open the soil so that stormwater infiltrates faster. The more stormwater that soaks in, the less dirty water there is washing into the lakes.
These plants create prime habitat. “It’s a good home for insects — especially pollinators,” says Dumas. “It’s also home for small wildlife, mammals, birds, reptiles. We have all those things, even in our very, very urban systems.”
Stormwater also tells another story about our lawns. Concerned citizens sometimes summon Dumas about a neighborhood’s retention pond that’s gone scummy and green. On inspection she sees lawns in every direction, perfectly green, no weeds. “Those lawns are being treated with fertilizers, and probably also pesticides,” she says. “It’s just inevitable that, come a rain, some of those extra nutrients are going into that pond system.”
Like Ribbons, Dumas sees No Mow May as a first step away from intensive lawn care. “It’s really kind of like training wheels. You get people to think about pollinators first. It’s this one simple thing. It’s only part of the year. A lot of people can embrace this, even if they’ve never thought about planting natives.”
But clover and dandelions aren’t the highest quality food for pollinators. “If we really want to protect our pollinators and provide habitat, we should be planting native,” she says. Sowing a few prairie plants or woodland forbs may not feel like building blocks of a pre-Columbian wilderness, but encouraging these native plants provides meaningful refuge to native microbes and insects. “Get more diversity in your yard,” she says urgently. “Please!”
Even turfgrass specialists are rethinking lawn care, pouring research into drought tolerance, shade tolerance, and reducing inputs overall.
“I think we do need to have important discussions on how we move forward with maintaining our lawns,” says UW-Madison turfgrass specialist Paul Koch.
There are things that turfgrass does well in an urban environment. It traps surface runoff and may not be bad at carbon sequestration. It helps keep urban spaces cooler and quieter.
What turfgrass doesn’t do is provide food or shelter for pollinators. “There’s a significant increase in awareness of pollinator health and how everybody’s lawn can influence pollinator health,” says Koch. Do you need grass wall to wall? Pollinator-friendly plantings around turfgrass edges is one approach. To the north, colleagues at the University of Minnesota — working with the Minnesota Bee Lab — have been developing bee lawn mixes using low flowering plants like Dutch white clover, self heal and creeping thyme. Minnesota has about 450 species of bees, and more than 60 of these have been observed feeding on the bee lawn mixture. It’s not close to pollinator paradise, but it’s still a significant amount of insect diversity on a very low number of flowers.
Koch has fielded more queries than ever about No Mow May this year, and he has one concern: letting your lawn get really long and then cutting it short triggers a hormonal stress response to grow really fast. A better idea all around is to raise your mower blade to 3.5 or 4 inches for all of lawn season, including May. “Your lawn’s going to be healthier. It’s going to need less fertilizer and water. It’s going to have a deeper root system, so it’s going to be more drought tolerant,” he says. Meanwhile, creeping Charlie, clover and dandelion are going to be able to flower. “If you maintain that the entire year, rather than just do it in May, you’re going to have a healthier lawn for the entire course of the season.”
