Now that spring is here, lawnmowers up and down the country are coming out of hibernation. The All-Ireland Pollinator Plan always recommends reducing mowing to help precious native wildflowers like Dandelions, which provide a vital food source for pollinators. But a recent study from Belgium, reported in Science magazine, reveals how you can help pollinators even when it’s time to cut your grass.
Meandering mowing can help biodiversity
In the study, six agricultural fields in Flanders were mown in an irregular, meandering pattern over three years. Another field was measured in a traditional ‘block’ pattern.
The research revealed that the fields mowed in a ‘meandering’ pattern saw a boost in biodiversity. Pollinator numbers and diversity improved after only two years in the meandering meadows, with 40% more bee diversity compared to the block mowing fields. Insects like solitary bees and butterflies also saw benefits, with meandering meadows providing the conditions insects needed for overwintering, shelter and nesting. But why does this happen?
“The curved mowing lines are changed each time,” the researchers explain, “Some parts remain unmown during a year, while others are mowed once or twice. Thus, the complexity increases each consecutive year because parts remain unmown, others are always mowed and an increasing variety of intermediates arises.”
The image below shows the meandering meadow management on the same plot of grass over three years. As the curved mowing lines were always changed with each mowing cycle, some parts were kept unmown, while others were mown once or twice.
The power of imperfection
“It’s pretty novel to think about setting up a system to hay a field in this way,” Mace Vaughan of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation told Science. “Farmers generally like tidy fields and straight lines. The new approach highlights the power of imperfection.”
Regimented straight lines are also common in our gardens. This research has implications on grasslands closer to home. More and more, people are moving away from manicured lawns to mini meadows cut every 4-6 weeks (short-flowering meadows), or just once a year (long-flowering meadows). Many people are embracing a mixed approach, managing some areas as short-flowering meadows, some as long-flowering meadows, and cutting other parts of their grass more regularly, or not at all.
Similarly, communities across the island of Ireland have been getting creative with mowing, from Abbeyleix Tidy Towns’ lawn art competition, to summer swirls, pathways and spirals at the entrance to estates.
Another recent study encouraged us to see Ireland’s two million gardens as a potential new national park. If we all embraced ‘the power of imperfection’ in our gardens and made our mowing a bit more ‘wiggly’, we might be one step closer to fulfilling this potential, and creating a landscape where pollinators can survive and thrive.
Find out more:
Put some wiggle in your mowing. Bees will love it – Science
How to create a short-flowering meadow
Creating and restoring meadows in local communities and gardens