There’s one way of getting the look of the Chelsea Flower show winner, Ula Maria’s forest bathing garden, and that’s not to mow your lawn but let the flowers and long grass spring up. ‘This is not,’ I would say austerely to the neighbours if they hang over the wall to suggest a man who could cut the grass, ‘an unkempt and neglected space; it is immersive, relaxing and calming’. Actually, that would be pushing it given that most people’s grassy area lacks flint, a blue shed and trees, but you get the gist. And one of the important aspects of this garden, according to Liz Nicholson, the chair of the judges, is that it created ‘possibly the biggest insect habitat I’ve ever seen’ – in Chelsea, presumably.
This is the time of year when environmentalists exhort us to give the lawnmower a rest
Which brings me to the horticultural topic of the month, No Mow May. This is the time of year when environmentalists exhort us to give the lawnmower a rest, and let the long grass spring up, so your manicured garden looks more like a meadow; very Ula Maria. The impression of simple neglect can be overridden by creating a path through the long grass to suggest – look! – this isn’t mere sloth; this is planned long grass. For places where mown lawns are part of a public space, the central lawns can be kept, for instance in a college quad or court, and the long grass reserved for the back of the show. In Green Park in London, just part of the park, rather than the whole, is given over to long grass all the year round; that partial approach is fine too.
The point of the thing isn’t to be insanely irritating; it is to create a habitat for flowers and pollinating insects which will compensate for the depletion of meadows across the country. There are 20 million gardens in Britain. If all owners did their bit to create an hospitable space for bugs and birds, it could be genuinely transformative. The idea was started by the environmental organisation, Plantlife, and it’s premised on the reality that 97 per cent of native meadowland has been lost since the 1930s. You read that correctly. So, the pressing need of the moment is not to carpet the country with trees (though obviously that has a place) as most political parties seem to want; it’s to restore meadowland. And if you want to see the amount of creaturely activity that takes place in an average meadow, look at the film Microcosmos. It’s a fascinating, if stage-managed, depiction of a day in a French field.
The results can be seen quite quickly. A friend, who’s into all this, writes that ‘Last year I ended up with orchids growing on our little patch of lawn in Hay – this year it’s cowslips and dandelions which will give way to the jewel-like flowers of vetch’. And to my simple mind, there is nothing prettier than an expanse of buttercups and daisies.
The thing is, Nature doesn’t recognise May as such; for her, the high season of flowers and grasses and bug and bird breeding goes from May into June. So we need not one month of giving the mowers a miss, but two; June, as well, to maximise the benefits and give insect breeding a chance. I think Pride in Nature might do it as a slogan, don’t you?
Granted it would take quite a lot for the UK’s 20 million gardens to compensate for the loss of habitat from other causes: bad agricultural practice (I give you the alternative: regenerative farming, where livestock is part of the deal, and vegans can just suck that up) and, still more, the problem of the amount of land being given over to housing development, most likely as a result of increasing demand from uncontrolled immigration over the last quarter century. But still, as someone said, Every Little Helps.
Come July, you can go back to your lawns, though it may take a scythe rather than a mower to bring it back to order. My environmentally-minded friend recommends the Natural History Museum’s guide: How to grow a lawn that’s better for wildlife. But really, the slogan No Mow May says it all.
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