Good morning News Viewers, welcome to our “Better Late than Never” Monday free chat; today I’m feeling the need to walk on the wild side. Since Free Range is an open forum anything goes free chat, but with an environmental bent, I’m thinking wild lawns. For the environment, for the bugs, for the soil and, in the words of a pompous Redcoat in The Last of the Mohicans, “For KING, for COUNTRY”. . . . lets talk wild lawns.
One of our many brainy commenters mentioned in another discussion the fixation with mowed and manicured lawns, and it piqued my interest; Anything not to mow (now let’s see if the neighbors copy me or report me. . . .) This, by the way, is No Mow May. I love it…..
Conservation charity Plantlife is urging people to leave their lawnmowers in the shed for a month and to let wild flowers grow instead.
It is also asking people to count the flowers that do grow, and record them as part of its No Mow May project.
Leaving the grass uncut will create a habitat that will benefit bees and other insects, the organisation says.
Plantlife says lawns could be biodiversity hotspots if left alone. It says those who participated in its campaign last year reported the growth of more than 250 plant species on their lawns.
Among declining plant sightings were wild strawberry, wild garlic and rarities including adders’-tongue fern. There were also sightings of declining species such as man and green-winged orchids.
Also noted were the return of insects whose numbers have been in decline.
One gardner said he’s been stunned at how quickly bugs have returned to his back garden: an encouraging signal given the global decline of insect populations.
“You could walk through the middle of the garden on a sunny day, and it throbbed with that sound of insects,” he says. “That used to be commonplace in the British countryside, but sadly isn’t these days.”
Sarah Shuttleworth, 39, a botanist who works for Plantlife, has also noticed the chirping of crickets getting much more noticeable after allowing her lawn in Somerset to grow wild.
The likes of woodpeckers, stag beetles, and dragonflies have made repeat appearances after one gardener adopted a laissez-faire approach to his garden as a whole.
He noted also though that his mother didn’t think the lawn looked at all tidy. . . . 😁😁
So Happy Monday all, and Happy No Mow May, where we live in an outer world of meadows rather than lawns as a way to feed our inner worlds wild diversity rather than rigid conformity. This is an open forum, we would love to hear what’s’ going on in the many wildly diverse minds who are part of the NV community– what’s happening in your neck of the meadow? 😉 ok, or woods…… 😉
Source: BBC
