Creating a Bee and Butterfly Garden

Another world is not only possible. She is on her way. On a
quiet day I can hear her breathing. – Arundhati Roy

There’s a good reason why “Think global, act local” is a popular idea: it’s the only possible way for us as individuals to counter our climate crisis.  And for us as a human species to not just survive but to thrive—along with the myriad other species that inhabit the earth alongside us. So in the summer of 2019, we stopped mowing the field around our solar tracker, to allow the whole space to develop into a bee and butterfly garden, and to welcome all the other less visible pollinators. We’ve always had more dandelions than grass, anyway, so it didn’t qualify as lawn by most standards. The song, “I know where the beez have gone” by the band Slambovian Circus of Dreams, leads off: I’ve stopped cutting grass; I stopped trying to control the world. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfA6Lhv8fAc

 
Popular culture has taken up this theme of not cutting the grass. An article in The Guardian (Feb. 1, 2020) urged gardeners to help the bees by not mowing their lawns. Minnesota is paying homeowners to replace lawns with bee-friendly wildflowers, clover and native grasses. Around 55 of Minnesota’s 350 bee species depend on white clover alone. “So just by not treating white clover like a weed and letting it grow in a yard provides a really powerful resource for nearly 20% of the bee species in the state.” https://returntonow.net/2020/01/29/minnesota-will-pay-homeowners-to-replace-lawns-with-bee-friendly-wildflowers-clover-and-native-grasses. The USA has close to 165,000 square kilometres of grassland, including not just private lawns but public parks; this is about area of the four states of Minnesota, Massachusetts, Maryland and Maine combined.

Lawns create a monoculture that is directly opposed to a biodiverse ecosystem. The single most powerful argument for not cutting your grass is the gift we make to our pollinators. Our pollinators are a crucial part of our food supply and of our economy, yet many are becoming endangered. Put simply, pollinators are insects and birds that transfer pollen from one plant to another, so aiding their reproduction and allowing most fruit and vegetables to flourish, including apples and oranges, squash, nuts and berries of every kind. These pollinators include bees of all sorts—of which there are about 20,000 species, including honey bees, bumblebees, and the vast number of solitary bees—butterflies, especially the endangered Monarchs, birds—especially hummingbirds—bats, beetles, wasps, moths, flies, and even those much loathed mosquitoes. Agriculture is especially dependent on bees to pollinate the blossoms of trees and other plants: just imagine if cherry and apple blossoms entirely disappeared from our landscape. The US Park Service studied the effect of reducing lawn mowing on bee populations and showed that mowing every two weeks significantly increased the bee populations compared with weekly mowing [ref]. They also noted that there was no increase in the tick population with less frequent mowing.

Cut back on lawn mowing and watch how your wildflowers flourish. Seeds from overgrown grass quickly become a feast for wild birds and an abundant source for nesting materials. And a well-kept lawn needs regular watering, which can deplete aquifers. Bans on watering lawns are growing increasingly common as our planet grows hotter and drought becomes more widespread. Yet there is clearly a lot of cultural and social resistance to letting the grass grow in our gardens. On a recent trip across almost the width of Nova Scotia, we didn’t spot a single unmown lawn. What will it take to shift this collective will, so that all of us blessed with gardens can share in a small but vital way in adding to the health of our environment?