How to get X10 more bees in your 'locked down' garden

May is the time when many of us get on with jobs in the garden including competing with our neighbours for that classic British ‘bowling green’ stripe. Many of us have had no choice letting our hair grow during lockdown. Why not break with tradition and do the same for at least a small part of your garden? And that includes dandelions!

Traditionally this is the time of year when a whole host of lawnmowers begin to appear in British gardens. I say ‘traditionally’ as the temperature here this morning is 6C!  Nevertheless I am already beginning to see some colour emerging on the wild flower patch I planted here a year ago. Research undertaken by citizen scientists across the UK who have taken part in the largest-ever survey of the humble lawn Plantlife’s Every Flower Counts - reveal not only the astonishing diversity of wild flowers growing on Britain’s lawns, but that incredibly simple changes in mowing can result in enough nectar for ten times more bees and other pollinators.

Here are some good reasons:

  • over 200 species were found flowering on lawns including rarities such as meadow saxifrage, knotted clover and eyebright
  • the top three most abundant lawn flowers are daisy, white clover and selfheal. Over half a million flowers have been counted, including 191,200 daisies.
  • first ever National Nectar Score for our lawns: all lawn flowers in the survey combined produced a colossal 23kg of nectar sugar per day, enough to support 2.1 million - or around 60,000 hives - of honeybees.
  • ‘Mohican’ lawn cut suits all: Highest production of flowers and nectar were on lawns cut every four weeks, whilst longer, unmown grass had a wider range of flowers.·    

Plantlife asked participants how often they mowed their lawns and those who had left their lawns unmown for No Mow May revealed very different – and exciting – results for our beleaguered pollinators:

  • the highest production of flowers and nectar sugar was on lawns cut once every four weeks. This gives ‘short-grass’ plants like daisies and white clover a chance to flower in profusion, boosting nectar production tenfold.
  • areas of longer unmown grass were, however, more diverse in their range of flowers, with other nectar-rich plants like oxeye daisy, field scabious and knapweed increasing the range of nectar sources for different pollinators and extending nectar availability into late summer.
Why not take part in Plantlife’s ‘Every flower counts’ this month. It’s very simple:

  1. Simply leave your mower in the shed for No Mow May and let the flowers grow.
  2. From 23rd May to 31st May take part in Every Flower Counts by counting the number of flowers in a random square metre of your lawn. The animation here shows what to do.
  3. Enter your counts on the website and instantly receive your very own Personal Nectar Score, showing how much nectar is being produced by the flowers on your lawn and how many bees it can support.

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