Why Some In New Jersey May Refuse To Mow Their Lawns This Summer

NEW JERSEY — A growing movement to abandon lawn mowing — at least for the month of May — is spreading across the United States, and could include some participants in New Jersey.

It's called “No Mow May and is a Bee City USA conservation project. The intention is to let the grass grow during May to create habitat and forage for native bees and other early-season pollinators.

The movement was popularized by Plant Life in the United Kingdom during the pandemic and came to Appleton, Wisconsin, two years ago.

The City Council there, acting on a petition signed by 435 property owners in 2020, agreed to suspend weed ordinances for the month of May, according to a WBAY report. Partnering Lawrence University researchers found five times the number of bees and three times the number of bee species in lawns that weren’t mowed compared with city parks that were mowed, according to research published online.

While there is no official ordinance in New Jersey for "No Mow May," residents can participate in their own way. Quiet Princeton, a group of Garden State residents advocating for the reduction of noise and pollution in the environment, has published a guide on how to get involved.

"This simple idea is to skip mowing your lawn in April and May, so that wild plants can flower, for the bees to pollinate. Start mowing in June. Help save the bees," Quiet Princeton said.

Bees are in trouble worldwide. Bees are important pollinators, and their work is vital. Scientists say it’s a complex problem, but habitat loss is one of the big culprits.

“So the idea is if we let our lawns grow a little bit higher, these things that we would normally call weeds would actually be, uh, serving as food sources for our native bees and pollinators that are coming out of hibernation right around April and May,” Dr. Israel Del Toro, the lead researcher, told Green Bay, Wisconsin, news station WBAY.

Since then, multiple other Wisconsin communities are taking part in No Mow May, including Greenfield, Patch reported. Across the state border, in Edina, Minnesota, city officials also suspended weed ordinance enforcement. The pollinator-boosting idea has also spread to other parts of the country, according to Wisconsin Public Radio.

But the idea of not mowing the grass in May? Well, “them’s fightin’ words” in some of America’s suburbs and cities, where the bees too often don’t have a fighting chance because miles of concrete have replaced their habitat.

Some residents of Appleton who decried the pollinator-friendly initiative as a “moronic idea” in 2020 haven’t warmed to it now that No Mow May is a permanent fixture in the city, the Appleton Post–Crescent reported. Several City Council members opposed the measure to establish No Mow May as policy, arguing that overgrown lawns make the city look trashy, are a source of misery for people with pollen allergies and fuel neighborhood bickering.

“It makes disharmony among neighbors, and that is always going to be a problem that we need to discuss,” Appleton City Councilwoman Sheri Harzheim said at a meeting in March, explaining her vote against the measure to suspend applicable ordinances during May, the Post-Crescent reported.

“As much as we need more bees in these neighborhoods, we need harmony amongst the people who live together in this city,” she said.

On the other hand, participants feel proud about what they’re doing to help bees, according to the same report.

“I think that No Mow May is an amazing project, and it definitely cements Appleton as a leader when it comes to pollinators,” Appleton resident and No Mow May participant Madeleine McDermott told the Post-Crescent.

The Xerces Society, which sponsors the Bee City USA no-mow movement, offers print-at-home signs that participants can put in their windows to let neighbors know why their grass has grown so shaggy.

• Related: Uncut Grass Grinds Some Neighbors' Gears

The city of Greenbelt, Maryland, observes “No Mow Month” in April, which prompted gardening blogger Susan Harris to write a letter to the editor of her local newspaper warning the practice “can seriously damage healthy lawns.”

She cited advice from University of Maryland Extension that “infrequent mowing allows the turf to grow too tall” and “subsequent mowing removes too much leaf surface and may shock the plants.”

After they’ve grown unchecked for a month, the best mowing strategy is a gradual, staged approach, Paul Koch, an associate professor and turf grass extension specialist at the University of Wisconsin, told Better Homes & Gardens.

“You never want to remove more than one-third of the green leafy tissue at any one time,” he said, explaining it could take a few cuts to return the lawn to the preferred height.

“As long as you're taking care to go back down at a gradual level to normal mowing height," he said, "I don't think there are any long-term effects that you're going to have on the health of the lawn.”

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