Taking Care of Your Lawn While Supporting Nature: Adjusting Your Mowing Habits
Frequent Mowing in Summer: How Frequently Should Your Lawn Get a Haircut?
Tending to your lawn during summer is common practice, but how often should you actually mow? The German Federal Association for the Environment and Nature Conservation (BUND) suggests limiting mowing as much as possible for the benefit of both your lawn and the environment.
Top Tip: Aim to mow your lawn when the grass reaches 20 centimeters in height, using the highest cutting height your lawnmower offers. By doing so, various flowering plants will remain standing, providing sustenance for a variety of insects.
To make the most of your lawn for nature, consider mowing at different times to allow insects an opportunity to escape. This ensures that your lawn always has blooming areas. Creating an island or border strip filled with flowering plants will provide even more shelter for beneficial insects.
While intensively used areas may require more frequent mowing, it's essential to remove the cut grass from the lawn to prevent an excessive amount of nutrients from entering the soil.
Why Reduce Mowing
Minimizing mowing provides wildflowers, such as clover, daisies, and dandelions, a chance to flourish. These plants are vital food sources for wild bees, butterflies, and other insects, as they offer nectar and pollen. Limiting mowing also offers shelter for hedgehogs, field mice, and amphibians.
Keep the height of your lawn to about five centimeters when mowing. This allows many herbs to bloom, ensuring the grass mower can handle future growth until the next use. However, avoid leaving grass clippings as mulch on the lawn, as this could result in an over-fertilized lawn that would be less appealing to the insects you want to attract.
Mowing Tips for a Lush, Biodiverse Lawn
Grass Growth Adjustments
- One-Third Rule: Never remove more than one-third of the grass height at a time to reduce stress on the lawn and promote a resilient lawn [2][4].
- Adjust for Growth: Most lawns require weekly mowing during active growth [3][4], but you may need to mow every 5–7 days during periods of rapid growth [2][3].
- Cool-Season Grasses: Growth slows in summer, so you may mow less frequently, every 1–2 weeks [2][5].
- Warm-Season Grasses: Growth rates are fastest in summer and may need mowing every 3–5 days for a manicured look [1][2].
Benefits for Nature and Insects
- Higher Mowing Height: Setting your mower to a height of 3–4 cm (or about 1.5 inches) fosters deeper root growth, soil moisture retention, and insect shelter [1][4].
- Less Frequent Mowing: Reducing mowing frequency, particularly in less-used areas, encourages wildflowers to grow and supports beneficial insects [4].
- Meadow Areas: Leaving some portions of your lawn as a wildflower meadow or only mowing these areas once or twice a year attracts pollinators, birds, and beneficial insects [4].
| Approach | Mowing Frequency (Summer) | Benefit for Nature/Insects ||----------|---------------------------|----------------------------|| Traditional Lawn | 1x per week | Grass health, some biodiversity || Higher Cut/Reduced | Every 10–14 days | More wildlife, less disturbance || Wildflower Meadow | 1–2x per year | Maximum biodiversity |
Closing Thoughts
By adapting your mowing habits, you can cultivate both a healthy lawn and a more eco-friendly environment for nature and beneficial insects. Embrace the one-third rule, evaluate the best mowing frequency for your grass type, and consider creating wildflower areas to maximize the benefits for the environment.
- Adhering to the community policy of environmental conservation, one could implement an employment policy that promotes reducing mowing frequencies to support nature, such as promoting the one-third rule for grass height and adjusting mowing according to the growth of cool- and warm-season grasses.
- Incorporating home-and-garden lifestyle changes, one might consider implementing an employment policy that encourages employees to tend to their lawns in a nature-friendly manner, like creating meadow areas filled with wildflowers to attract pollinators and beneficial insects, or adopting a higher mowing height for deeper root growth and insect shelter.
