By Audrey Bengtson
Courtesy of Karin Twardosz Burghardt
If you don’t want to mow your lawn this month, that’s OK with the city.
College Park has waived the usual 12-inch limit for the height of grass, weeds and other lawn cover for No Mow April in an effort to allow native pollinators like bees and butterflies to feed and find habitats.
“Pollinators need floral resources in order to get the energy they need to build their broods up, especially early in the season,” said Daniel Gruner, a professor of entomology at the University of Maryland (UMD). “By pledging to not mow our lawns in April, we can make those scarce floral resources more available for pollinators.”
On its social media accounts, the city asked residents to participate in No Mow April for the fourth year.
Karin Burghardt, an associate professor of entomology and an extension specialist, endorsed the move.
“No Mow April is a great communication tool to connect in folks’ minds that their management strategies in their yards have consequences for insects.”
Burghardt said she would “encourage this to be a kind of, not just a month-long approach, but something you kind of adopt as a technique for all of the months of the summer.”
Laura Rost, the national coordinator of Bee City USA, which advocates for safe habitats for the world’s 350,000 natural pollinators, said No Mow April and Low Mow Spring started in the United Kingdom “as something easy people could do to increase floral blooms in the spring when hungry bees are just starting to emerge and are really needing nectar and pollen.”
In addition, Rost said, more than 3,600 species of bees native to America “ideally should have native flowers.’
“The best thing we can do to help bees is to plant native plants … and native shrubs and native trees that bloom,” Rost said. “That’s a great way to support bees.”
Still, Rost added, “The non-native weeds like dandelions are kind of junk food for bees, but if you have native flowers blooming in your lawn, that’s great, that’s definitely a good way to support bees.”
But Burghardt said residents and business owners use who use pesticides in their lawns should cut their grass.
“If you have a yard that you’re managing, you’re probably using pesticides to keep your lawn in shape, and in that case, we probably don’t want to have those residents not mowing because if they do end up attracting insects, they could be poisoning them when they use their pesticide treatments.”
