No Mow May

By ASHLING NATOFF, Student Ecologist.

Pollinators play a huge role in enabling the growth of many plants found across Ireland. These include those which produce fruit and vegetables, along with many wildflowers that provide colour and beauty to the landscape. Most of the pollination that occurs in Ireland is carried out by our 98 bee species. These include the honeybee, 77 species of solitary bee, and 20 different bumblebees. A variety of other insects, including butterflies and moths, also play an important role as pollinators. Many of these pollinators now face a variety of pressures such as habitat loss, reduced food, and more severe weather events.

The effects of these pressures can especially be seen in our bee populations, where a decline in numbers has been observed in over half of Irish bee species since 1980. On top of this, 30% of Irish bees were identified as threatened with extinction during the formation of the Irish Bee Red List. No Mow May is a simple and effective way of giving our pollinators a helping hand by providing them with the food and shelter they need to survive. Waiting until the end of May to start mowing allows for the growth of a variety of flowers such as dandelions, vetch, and red deadnettle, which are all important sources of food for pollinators. The provision of food plants is especially important for bumblebee queens at this time of year, when a single queen bee can feed on up to 6000 flowers per day to gain enough energy to raise her young. Other actions we can take in our gardens to help pollinators include planting a range of pollinator friendly plants that flower across different times of the year, reducing mowing to a 6-week rotation to allow flowers such as clover to grow between mows, retaining small patches or strips of unmown long grass where wildflowers can grow, and carrying out manual weeding rather than using pesticides in our gardens. For more information on how to make our gardens more pollinator friendly visit the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan Website at: https://pollinators.ie/gardens/.