No Mow May 2025
Over the years I’ve seen several club sites support this and hopefully more will follow this year. As said it’s not an excuse to be neglectful, these areas still need careful thought and management.
Back home we can also help by finding just a corner of our gardens to allow a chance for nature. Well done to the Club for promoting this.
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We moved into a new build in Sept 2022, down a country lane in Devon. We have a strange shape plot with an 90 yard road frontage. This is planted with Beech Hedge on a bank about 400mm high. Now the hedge is starting to become established we are hoping we can leave the grass below it uncut, so hopefully somewhere for wildlife.
The plot narrows from 24 yards to about 10 yards. The thin end of the cheese wedge shape is sown with meadow grass, has bluebells, wild garlic and snowdrops at the pointy bit and lots of yellow ground ivy ? flowers around the 40ft oak in the centre. We leave these for a few weeks after they have finished flowering and then treat it like the rest of the meadow area. It gets cut with a mulching mower to about 3" when it gets to 8" or 9" high, typically 6 to 8 weeks. Through the middle is mown a narrow walking strip each week. It is also home to 5 fruit trees, a walnut that is not looking very healthy and 3 twisted willows to soak up the moisture.
Around the house the grass gets treated like most people would, with the exception of the edges These are not cut, but left about 9" deep to grow as tall as they want. We can do this as we do not have any beds, just climbing roses, confederate jasmin and honeysuckle on the fencing around the kitchen.
To us these seems a good compromise on the time it takes us to look after it, not manicure it, and letting nature have the chance to do what it wants in places. It also means when we go away for a month in the summer we only have a few hours work to do on it when we get home.
Colin
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We have had a lot of rain this week and will be doing some mowing next week before we go away for a few days as the grass has grown a bit longer than I would like and could even longer when we come back but areas of the field will be left with longer grass although we do not have so many Orchids this year.
Our neighbour across two fields was mowing his grass on Sunday morning after a heavy day of rain the day before so would imagine it was very wet to cut and quite long.
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24 cows are in the field next to me actually eating grass. Surely that should not be allowed in May.
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No cows around here but field next to ours and across the road in another field 2 Arab horses in each field as our neighbour has dealt with Arab horses for years, only thing is they are a bit more picky what to eat so the grass goes but not some of the big flowering weeds.
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Yes, it’s good to see Nature Reserves all over the land now employing a variety of livestock to help manage and enrich the habitats for the betterment of nature. One of our local projects is even using old English breeds for this purpose. Now that’s a win, win!👍1
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Hi everyone,
In the last 20 years England has seen a 60% decline in flying insect populations. The main causes are habitat loss, climate change and agricultural intensification. To support the conservation of insect populations, for the last few years the Club has participated in No Mow May. An initiative where we allow parts of our sites to naturally grow in support of biodiversity to encourage the growth of wildflowers and other wild plants creating a haven for wildlife. Particularly pollinators, like bees, butterflies that play a vital role pollinating crops, making them essential to food security.
We took what we learnt from No Mow May and now have created a plan for sites to create No Mow Areas all year round. These areas will help enhance the natural beauty of our sites whilst offering an easy solution to support wildlife in the area. You will often see these areas marked out with a ‘No Mow Area’ sign. Many of our campsites are working hard on other great biodiversity initiatives to support the beautiful destinations we are lucky to be in. Now we are well into Spring, many more animals can be seen whilst out on our site network. Let us know what you have seen when you are out and about!
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