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Now that “No-Mow May” has seemingly come to an end, it’s time to open up the can of worms about “No-Mow June.” Yes, it lacks the fun alliteration of the former, but anyone who understands the actual principle behind the concept will be able to see through the charming wordplay and into the societal disaster that is manicured monoculture lawns. 🌾  Consider this a trigger warning for some strong but well-contemplated environmental opinions. 

When did INVASIVE grasses become the “cool” and ONLY thing we should have in our yards? Oh wait, yeah… it came from status-obsessed European aristocrats in the 1700s who literally thought, “Let’s show everyone that we’re rich enough to waste land!” and the practice got shoved down the throats of the American middle class after the 1800s by the fertilizer, pesticide, and lawn equipment industries (thanks again, capitalism). Unfortunately, it stuck. Call me crazy, but I think that needs to change. So put on those lounging undies and just leave your fking yard alone! Or put on your gardening undies and plant herbs or flowers or food or an apple orchard… or get a goat to graze on it. 🐐

So, here we all are, a hundred or so years later, still so stuck in patterns of social conformity that many of us can barely fathom options aside from having an all-grass lawn, as if continuously hacking away at a monocrop of a pretty pointless invasive plant is the ultimate art form. Not only are lawns the LARGEST irrigated crop in the U.S. (more than corn, wheat, and fruit orchards COMBINED), but they also uselessly guzzle an estimated 9 billion gallons of water daily. Gas-powered lawn equipment also produces disproportionate emissions relative to their size (I’ve loved the ease and quietness of my manual push reel mower). And of course, pesticides from lawns also hugely contribute to major problems for human health, aquatic life, pesticide resistance, etc. So, what we’ve come to know as a ’normal’ lawn isn’t good for food production, it’s not appreciated by wildlife, and it certainly isn’t any kind of champion of biodiversity or environmental friendliness… so WHY is it the norm?!

I’m honestly not here to make anyone feel bad for their personal decisions about what to do with their lawn, because there are some decent reasons to have a bit of mowed space – whether it’s for kids to run around on, for sunbathing, for a cross country course or sporting event, for outdoor social gatherings, to play fetch with your dog, etc. I merely would like to encourage you to think about WHY we are wasting so much time cultivating this weird archetype of a fully mowed, invasive grass-only, ‘perfect-looking’ lawn using gas-guzzling machines and utterly detrimental pesticides. And I’d like to discuss what the alternatives are.

Every single one of the last four rental properties I’ve lived at have mowed down or weed-whacked away almost every single unique, beautiful, medicinal, and environmentally beneficial plant within sight. This not only made these natural spaces look and feel much worse; it felt weirdly personal, and it felt like a completely unnecessary assault on my immediate natural environment. Just in the last two weeks, they mowed the vacant lot (basically, my current apartment’s backyard) full of dandelions I was actively harvesting (twice!) although I have never seen another soul on that land. It was becoming a beautifully diverse little prairie habitat with peonies, burdock, wildflowers and other beautiful and medicinal plants that were attracting pollinators whose company I was genuinely enjoying. All gone in an apparently careless 20-minute raucous. Feathery, edible, healing yarrow was starting to arise in our backyard. Desecrated. Ground elder, lilies of the valley, ground ivy, Virginia watercress, creeping bellflower, and other gorgeous little flowers. ALL of it was gone. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, weeds are just plants whose virtues have yet to be discovered. These were beautiful, ecologically important plants with hidden medicinal uses, and they were doing what they were supposed to do.

At my last rental house, we had to beg our landscapers to stop mowing our backyard habitat patch. Then, they started weed-whacking the intentional garden ring around the tree in our front yard (clearly isolated by landscaping bricks) which was filled with vines, morels, and other uniquely beautiful plant life. To be fair, there are some landscapers and groundskeepers out there who genuinely know plants, have more environmental and interpersonal respect, and have a better eye for aesthetics than these guys. But it really should not be hard to ask for something as simple as leaving some good plants alone. And it’s less work. While it might be cathartic to chop down all signs of life in sight, it’s certainly not attractive, professional, or respectful.

Letting a patch of yarrow grow where it wants to requires zero effort. Letting dandelions flourish costs nothing. Mowing an interesting labyrinth into your yard while leaving a corner to grow requires less work and is certainly more interesting and beautiful than a bald, uniform surface. I actually had to stop on my run today because a ‘wild’-looking yard was so incredibly breathtaking in contrast to all of the other yards in the neighborhood thanks to its incredible layered blooms and vines that were left to grow. I think some people fear the ‘overgrown’ aesthetic but don’t realize how easy it is to do a little bit of selective gardening (while identifying interesting plants instead of just ripping out all unidentified plants or ‘weeds’) to keep everything looking ‘neat’ if that’s your vibe.

Anyone who recognizes the urgency of our global environmental situation (including mono-crop agriculture, deforestation, climate change, etc.) will recognize that nurturing even a little bit of biodiversity has an enormous positive impact. Allowing plants more ‘freedom’ in our yards and society is a major solution to these problems. Hopefully, we can all be free-thinking enough to recognize the errors of the ‘trendsetting’ European aristocrats and simply let plants grow. While there are legitimate barriers to having a yard that is fully ‘wild’, or even to letting your plants grow over twelve inches (I see you, extremist city weed ordinances), maybe it’s time to convince your uptight HOA to respect the environment over a batch of homemade dandelion muffins. Our nation is LAGGING (very embarrassingly) in terms of fair environmental and personal property policies policing people’s yards, and I surely will never just lay back and take it. And I hope you don’t either. 

Wasteful yard emissions, monocrop-instigated pollinator collapse, pesticide runoff, damage to human health and aquatic ecosystems – these are all real, documented problems caused by an arbitrary addiction to boring lawns. If you want to be a part of the solution, plant herbs, flowers, and food. Mow a path or labyrinth into your yard while leaving some areas to be more wild or diverse. Plant alternative groundcover such as wild ginger, creeping thyme, chamomile, strawberry, mint, clover, violets, phlox, native sedges, comfrey, nasturtium, dandelions… the list goes on, and it isn’t limited by anything except for creativity. Download the PictureThis app to easily identify almost any plant with ease (you will be surprised how many uses and roles each plant or ‘weed’ has). Visit wildones.org to learn how to design an eco-friendly yard, join an environmental effort, or certify your habitat. Research the laws and restrictions in your area (arbitrary and outdated or not). Advocate for yourself. Sometimes just sharing a little bit of knowledge or asking groundspeople to leave areas untouched can go a long way.

“No-Mow May” started as the simple idea to give plants (and therefore pollinators and other small creatures dependent on plant diversity) one extra month to get their sh*t together, and it simply allows you to see what happens when a yard is allowed to grow for that extra month. It’s a great little experiment for those who are uncomfortable immediately transitioning to a labyrinth of wild plants in their yards. Usually it results in them finding that they were mowing over things worth keeping around. You don’t have to turn your yard into a forest or a protected prairie habitat, but it might be nice to leave that peony to grow, or to leave the yarrow to have its corner. The aristocrats who invented this problematic tradition have been dead for hundreds of years, and I think it’d be nice to let the monoculture lawns go with them.

Thank you so much for reading, and please sign up for the email subscription to my blog if you enjoyed this content and would like to see more! Your support means SO much to me! Also, check out some of the “pro-plant” merch I’ve created and added in my shop if you’d like to support my business and spread awareness – I think we all know by now that our independent statements hold a lot of power and are the first ingredients for real social change!

-Josh