Saying Yes to No Mow May

Saying Yes to No Mow May

Jon Hawkins - Surrey Hills Photography

SWT Project Manager Zoe Channon takes on Plantlife's No Mow May challenge.

Calling all Citizen Scientists! I seem to have put myself in that category however can I credibly be that person? Well time and this Blog will tell…

I’ve decided this year to take part in No Mow May, mostly as I’ve spent a lot of time talking about it of late and thought I’d better practice what I preach.

So what is it I hear you ask? It’s a campaign run by Plantlife which simply does what it says on the tin. It’s about ditching the lawnmower for a month, then seeing what flowers come through, it’s perfect for a lazy gardener like me and plays right to my strengths.

At the end of it all you can do a quick survey of a patch of your lawn and count the number of open flowers, then submit, it’s as easy as that. You even get a pollen score at the end, which I am hoping won’t be depressingly low however there is only one way to find out, what could possibly go wrong?

Plantlife have put together a this handy little video that explains more about the campaign and how to take part:

Two days after talking to Comms and Marketing about the Campaign, this escalated rather quickly from just a few posts on Social Media to me writing a Blog to share my journey with people, videos, ID sessions and all sorts of other things.

That is what could go wrong and I should have seen it coming. Blindsided from the word go.

I’ve never done anything like this before and if I’m really honest it very much sits outside my comfort zone, however of course that means I have to do it right? Be a Citizen Scientist and follow the golden rules of that department to think big, be better and have no fear.

Zoe's garden

My Surrey garden. Hopefully by the end of May the lawn will be a multicoloured mix of different flowers!

So follow my journey in my weekly blog, see how the experiment goes and what eventually might grow. I feel a small glimmer of excitement…

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