The battle of the sexes is playing out, it seems, on lawns up and down the country this month. Does your husband insist on getting the mower going as soon as one fresh blade appears in spring? Does your wife beg you to take part in No Mow May each year? It’s a trending topic this season, with social media feeds filled with countless videos of lawn-obsessed (usually male) homeowners posting about and meticulously trimming and tending their neatly clipped carpets of green.
Back in 2021, the nation’s gardener Monty Don criticised the preoccupation with a neat, striped lawn. “The obsession, which tends to be male, which is controlling rather than embracing, with making a lawn that is pure grass without any filthy and foreign invading plants in there, making sure it’s stripy and neat, and – phew! – just one aspect of life that’s under control,” he told the Radio Times. “That just doesn’t cut the mustard. It’s just not good enough. We’ve all got to get beyond that.”
Even though he is an outspoken critic of the rewilding movement, Monty believes that letting grass grow could be the most effective way to encourage insect and animal life in any garden, and he has put this idea into practice this May with his design for a dog-friendly garden at the Chelsea Flower Show, which features a ‘shaggy’ utility lawn dotted with dandelions.
But many people still hanker after the perfect green sward. “An immaculate manicured lawn has been a status symbol for centuries,” says Plantlife’s senior botanical advisor, Sarah Shuttleworth. “They’re about keeping up appearances.”
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It would be easy to dismiss the ‘mower man’ stereotype as outdated, but a recent poll by the charity revealed that actually men do indeed prefer to mow their lawns more often than women on average. Ultimately, 70 per cent of the women involved said they were open to participating in No Mow May, compared to 64 per cent of men. This is hardly surprising, given a study of 25 British couples last year revealed that 79 per cent thought of lawnmowing as a ‘man only’ job, while a further 8 per cent labelled it a man’s job, while women could help.
What’s more, high-profile horticultural figures like Kate Bradbury and Rachel de Thame have said they’ve noticed women more often appreciate wilder-looking spaces, while men label them ‘messy’.
Neat lawns = low biodiversity
Regardless of who actually mows the lawn, the growing prevalence of content about perfect lawns exposes the wide divide between those who want neat, tightly controlled plots, and new recommendations for how we should all be gardening for sustainability and biodiversity - especially when more than half of the UK’s flowering plants and mosses have disappeared in the past 50 years.
Whether it’s identifying plants, sharing tutorials or getting horticultural inspiration, social media plays a valuable role for gardeners, but it can also amplify harmful ideas and practices, such as the other breakout trend of influencers filming themselves clearing neighbourhood spaces of vegetation.
These before-and-after videos attract millions of followers, but this sort of digital content may be having the unintended side effect of destroying habitats and reducing biodiversity, by promoting an ultra-neat and tidy approach to green spaces, without thought to the other creatures using them.
At a time when we’re increasingly building into our gardens, and many turn to artificial turf in the pursuit of neat, low-maintenance spaces, Plantlife’s No Mow May movement – where people stop mowing their lawn for the entire month - seems more important than ever.
But there is plenty of pushback on going more wild and wildlife friendly. In the US, residents have long been known to disguise brown lawns during periods of drought by painting them green. Ted Steinberg, a history professor at Case Western Reserve University, has written about how the manicured lawn became iconic in the postwar era when Americans were keen to embrace kaleidoscopic colour, while smart patios and sliding glass doors helped homeowners see the garden as an extension of their house, with soft turf to mimic carpet.
Just last summer, an eco-conscious resident of the Catskills in New York was threatened by local authorities with fines of up to $1,000 a day if she didn’t mow her pollinator-friendly lawn, where she’d deliberately added edible and beneficial plants to support insects and add nitrogen to the soil.
Lawn preferences are changing
Sarah Shuttleworth says all is not lost, however. “Although lawns are often still a desired garden aesthetic today, increasingly we’re seeing a shift in attitudes towards lawn management and we’re noticing more creativity in how we enjoy our green spaces that save us effort, cost, reduce our carbon footprint and rekindle wildlife on our doorsteps.”
Victoria Wade of Victoria Wade Landscape Architecture, who designs gardens with her husband Joe, says they’ve noticed wilder gardens becoming more mainstream and socially acceptable. “The days of striped lawns and neatly clipped edges are definitely passing now, in favour of more abundant and overflowing planting.
"Some of our clients are foregoing lawns altogether and choosing more space for mixed planting and greater biodiversity. Many of our clients with larger gardens are also embracing a lower mowing policy: paths along the edge of meadows and orchards, for example, instead of mowing the whole area.”
In their own garden, Victoria and Joe also reap the benefits of letting the grass grow long. “On our family-sized lawn we mow the edge only, while the middle is planted up with bulbs and wildflowers that make a gorgeous display throughout the year. Less mowing, less watering and less weeding (especially with dangerous chemicals) means lots of different species of plants popping up: great for biodiversity, animal habitats and a huge reduction of energy use.”
What you can do this May
Sarah from Plantlife says we can all help, no matter how small our outdoor space: “With an estimated 23 million gardens in the UK, the simple action of leaving areas to grow long for the summer, by reducing how much you mow, can deliver big gains for nature.”
While you might not think it, grassland across the world is a crucial carbon store, locking down 34 per cent of the earth’s carbon, according to Plantlife. Experts estimate that mowing your lawn twice yearly instead of once a week could save the same amount of CO2 as taking 45,000 cars off the UK’s roads.
To increase your lawn’s carbon storage potential by up to 10 percent, collect up any grass cuttings to allow deeper rooting wildflowers to grow.
Reduce your lawn mowing and you could start to see daisies, creeping buttercup, yellow rattle, common birds’-foot trefoil and field forget-me-not; some of the UK’s most recorded lawn wildflowers.
But if you’re worried about letting your whole garden go wild, there are ways you can still make a difference without putting away the lawnmower for good. “Adopting a layered approach, where shorter grass is complemented by areas of longer grass, boosts floral and species diversity, increases nectar and pollen for bees and butterflies and sequesters more carbon in the soil,” says Sarah.
Top tips for a looser but lovely lawn
- Grow patches of grass to different lengths – this will give you the highest number of wildflowers as you’ll provide habitats for a range of species
- Avoid using herbicides or fertilisers as these are harmful to many wild plants
- Avoid using moss killer as lawn moss can help some wild plants establish
- Give plants time to set seed before mowing them so they spread naturally
- When you do mow, remove grass cuttings to prevent nutrient build-up, as this will encourage some species, but work against most wild plants
Get involved with the No Mow May movement online by signing up at plantlife.org.uk/nomowmay and tagging Plantlife in images and videos of your wild spaces. Use the hashtags: #NoMowMay #NoMowMay2025 #FlowerPower.
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