Need an excuse not to mow your lawn? Join 'no mow May' and help pollinators

（单词翻译）

Need an excuse not to mow¹ your lawn? Join 'no mow May' and help pollinators

Transcript²

May is often the start of lawn-mowing³ season, but some cities and towns are taking heed⁴ of the needs of bees and other pollinators, and asking homeowners to let their grass grow all May.

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Need an excuse not to cut your lawn? Here's one - scientists say leaving your grass a little longer in the spring can actually help bees and other pollinators. A few dozen U.S. cities have joined a program called No Mow May Here's Chuck Quirmbach of member station WUWM in Milwaukee.

CHUCK QUIRMBACH, BYLINE⁵: Matthew Normansell is standing⁶ in the small side yard of his house in Appleton, Wis., and he likes what he's starting to see poke⁷ through the ground.

MATTHEW NORMANSELL: You can already see the dandelions starting to pop up. You get a little bit of the creeping charlie, a few small violets, a lot of daisies as well. But they'll all be flowering kind of at some point during May and providing, you know, pollen⁸ to these pollinating insects.

QUIRMBACH: Those plants will flower in May because, Normansell says, he'll be leaving his lawn mower⁹ in the garage and joining about 500 other Appleton residents taking part in a city-backed program to not mow at all for a month. This community of 75,000 has become a U.S. leader in the No Mow May movement, which began in England and has spread to more than 30 cities, mostly in the Midwest. That's where May is considered a key time for pollinators to come out of hibernation¹⁰ or their winter habitat. Israel Del Toro teaches biology at Lawrence University in Appleton. He says an initial study of unmowed yards in the city shows a fivefold increase in the number of bees, and they're very hungry in the spring.

ISRAEL DEL TORO: So when we leave our weeds - or things we would normally call weeds - to grow, those are like little cheeseburgers for our pollinators, and they're able to get some cheap calories really, really fast and put on some weight that'll give them a leg up for the season.

QUIRMBACH: In many U.S. cities, not cutting your grass in May could get you a citation¹¹, but communities taking part in this initiative have agreed to waive¹² that. Appleton Mayor Jake Woodford is taking part in the No Mow program, too.

JAKE WOODFORD: And it's, you know, not been without its hiccups¹³ or its frustrations¹⁴ from some community members. But by and large, there's just been incredible support for the effort, a lot of buy-in, a lot of participation¹⁵.

QUIRMBACH: But hearing about increasing pollinator populations has not convinced everyone of the value of letting the lawn grow.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAWN MOWER)

QUIRMBACH: At the service area of the Northside Power Center in Appleton, Steve Schick says during a rainy springtime, the grass can grow really tall by June.

STEVE SCHICK: Now you've got to struggle getting it back under control. And a lot of people will have a problem with their mowers when they try to get it back under control. And they - a lot of times it will damage them.

QUIRMBACH: Backers of No Mow May advise raising the lawn mower blade height in June or using a string trimmer first. Appleton is one of about 150 communities with a Bee City designation under a program coordinated¹⁶ by the Oregon-based Xerces Society for Invertebrate¹⁷ Conservation. The group's Matthew Shepherd says, while valuable, not mowing is just a first step.

MATTHEW SHEPHERD: It's not like the endpoint. You know, we can't say, gosh, we've let our lawn grow; we've saved the bees, yay.

QUIRMBACH: Shepherd and others say they hope keeping lawn mowers in storage for a month will further habitat awareness¹⁸ and the central role pollinators play.

For NPR News, I'm Chuck Quirmbach in Milwaukee.