This document promotes the idea of "No Mow May" and rewilding lawns to support biodiversity. It provides reasons for allowing lawns to grow wild in May such as providing food and habitat for insects, birds, and other wildlife. Not mowing allows native plants to grow and flowers to bloom, attracting more species. Monocultures in lawns are criticized for lacking diversity and attracting pests, while polycultures are praised for their resilience. Quotes from various sources further explain the benefits of natural landscapes and meadows over conventional lawns in terms of supporting the web of life.

1. No Mow May
Support multispecies resurgence

2. Food desert!
Capri23auto on Pixabay

3. all you can
eat buffet!

4. Geez, hasn’t
anyone heard of
#nomowmay?
Getty Images

5. No
food. No shelter.
No place to raise
a family.
Paul Brennan, Pixabay

6. monoculture
alert!

7. And
humans wonder
why they need to rent
travelling
beehives.
monocultures are
the hallmark of what’s wrong
in agriculture today… Nature loves
the symbiosis of many different
species — microbial, plant, animal —
all living together, one
benefitting from the other.
~Farmer Will Harris
George Steinmetz, National Geographic

8. ❤ A life without animals is not worth living❤ , Pixabay
[a lawn] is authoritarian.
Under the mower's brutal
indiscriminate rotor, the landscape is
subdued, homogenized, dominated
utterly.
~Michael Pollan, Why Mow
Please don’t
mow!

9. Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Biodiversity—diversity within
species, between species & of
ecosystems—is declining faster
than at any time in human history
~Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity &
Ecosystem Services, 2019, IPBES

11. Nicholas Erwin, Flickr
yellow-
banded bumblebee
American bumblebee
yellow bumblebee
cuckoo bumblebee
rusty patched bumblebee
About a third of Toronto’s native
bees have drastically declined
or disappeared

12. wren
acorn
willow
moss
fern
dandelion
bluebell
raven
heron
goldfinch
otter
kingfisher
Drawing Jackie Morris

13. monocultures
lack diversity
Jo Re, Pixabay

14. I adore
monocultures!
Jo Re, Pixabay
Lack of
diversity
attracts pests &
pathogens

15. benmenting, Pixabay

16. Gary Bendig, Unsplash
Lots of tasty
treats!
Hey, I like
them!

17. Gary Bendig, Unsplash
Time to get
digging!

18. Plenty to share!

19. Newell Nussbaumer
Yo, humans.
Dumb idea!
Conventional lawns
are a battle of control
over the natural
world

20. Camino Verde
Polycultures
are Earth’s
technology for
resilience

21. Listen to the
difference

22. [biodiversity is the]
wondrous, teeming, calamitously
threatened variety and variability of
life on earth, sometimes measured by
species richness.
~Robert McFarlane

23. That gifts that were
being offered was evident in
the general hum and flutter of
insect life. The meadow was audible
with bees and crickets; the mowed grass
was silent. The meadow waved and
nodded in the wind; crowds of
leafhoppers leapt to the brush of a
hand. The lawn was deadly still.
~Sara Stein, Noah’s Garden

24. What we need
now is to
deeply love the
wild earth
Photo by Bob Travis on Flickr

25. v
I can make a
difference. I can manage
[rewild my lawn] in a way that
contributes to the ecological
fabric of the city and the life
of a city.
~Dr. Carly Ziter

26. No Mow May
homes had three times
higher bee richness and
five times higher bee
abundances.
~Appleton

27. not
mowing or
blowing doesn’t
just help us.

28. Paige Vickers, Curbed
Love Earth. Meet
new friends!
Let’s generate
some buzz!

29. Mario Quevedo, Flickr
Rotten grass
becomes fireflies
腐草為螢

30. Katya, Flickr
Snails are
tasty!

31. When laughing children
chase after fireflies, they are not
pursuing beetles but
catching wonder.
~David G. Haskell
Rodd Lucier, Flickr

32. Alison Miksch
Rethinking your
lawn isn’t about
curb appeal

33. It’s about soul
appeal

34. Meaningful
sustainability requires
multispecies resurgence,
that is, the remaking of
livable landscapes
through the actions of
many organisms.
~Anna Tsing

35. A landscape is a
multispecies
gathering in the
making.
~Kenneth Olwig
A landscape isn’t
just backdrop or
scenery.

36. Andras Vas, Unsplash
I am
landscape
When we look deeply into the leaf,
we can see many things. We can see the
plant, we can see the sunshine, we can
see the clouds, we can see the earth.
When we utter the word “leaf”, we have
to be aware that a leaf is made of non-
leaf elements. If we remove the non-
leaf elements, such as the sunshine, the
clouds, and the soil, there will be no
leaf left.
~Thich Nhat Hanh

37. Human body is a
multiplicity that doesn’t
end at the skin.
~Thich Nhat Hanh
I am
landscape
Illustration by bedelgeuse.tumblr.com

38. We’re all—trees, humans,
insects, birds, bacteria—
pluralities. Life is embodied network... where
ecological & evolutionary tensions between
cooperation and conflict are negotiated & resolved.
These struggles often result not in the evolution of
stronger, more disconnected selves but in the
dissolution of the self into relationship. Because life is
network, there is no “nature” or “environment,”
separate & apart from humans. We are part of the
community of life, composed of relationships
with “others.”
~David George Haskell, The Songs of Trees
BBC

39. Where in the
world am I?

41. We’re in the Manitoulin-Lake
Simcoe Ecoregion of the Mixedwood
Plains Ecozone. Before colonization, this land
was 90% forest. The Mixedwood Plains supported a
greater diversity of trees and plants than any
other part of Canada. Now only 17-20% of
Indigenous forests remain, mostly in
wetlands.

42. The idea of lawns
being somehow compulsory is
a largely British idea, passed on
like a raging infection to
certain of the colonies.
~Noel Kingsbury
z
Stuart Yeates, Flickr

43. International Boreal Conservation Science Panel
Over half of the 690
species of concern in Ontario
use habitat in southern
Ontario forests

44. Photo by Jim Williams
forests are home to 80%
of the world’s terrestrial
biodiversity.
We need
more forests!

45. Mine

46. I want a
“normal” front
yard

47. I’d prefer a
forest

48. Let’s
negotiate

49. red oak
white oak
bur oak
bitternut hickory
shagbark hickory
shellback hickory
sugar maple
Canada plum
tulip tree
honey locust
white pine
redbud

50. ninebark
serviceberry
ironwood
hazelnut
witch hazel
bayberry
pagoda dogwood
spicebush
carolina allspice
hoptree
hoptree
persimmon
sumac

51. Forests? Meh.
hunting is better
on alvars
Wendy Miller on Flickr

54. Mike Burrell The Nomadic Naturalist, Balsam Ragwort

55. USFWS Mountain-Prairie, Prairie Smoke

56. Jill Wellington, Pixabay
Before manicured
lawns, with their chemicals,
mowers, and blowers, there were
ecological meadows, with their
butterflies, birds, and bees.
~Penny Lewis, Ecological Landscaping
Association

57. Conservation Research Institute

58. Jared Barnes Meristem Horticulture, Gulf Fritillary
It’s about
time you planted
a grass I like!

59. 5-7 plants
short mix
legible layers
tidier (designed) look
large diversity
tall mix
mingled layers
wilder (messy) look

60. Landscapes
are gatherings of ways
of being in the making.
~Anna Tsing
Liga Petersone, Shutterstock

61. Newell Nussbaumer
Let’s reimagine
normal!
(rewild ourselves)

62. Bee lawn at Kenwood Park in Minneapolis. Rachel Urick/University of Minnesota Bee Lab
Tell your
neighbours
you’re growing a
bee lawn

63. Better yet, tell them
you’re supporting multispecies
resurgence!

64. My imperfect lawn… is the
floor, and the causeway to get around
in my landscape. It stops erosion and slows
rainwater, allowing infiltration, cleaning
and restoring water to deeper soils and
eventually to aquifers.
~Carol Reese

65. In an organic yard,
Fernando takes a decaying blade of
grass down in his burrow and munches on
it "These things are my favorite!" says
Fernando. "I need some more!" Back at the surface,
Fernando finds some home made compost "What is
this? Oh my! This is my new favorite!
(munch munch) It's so good! (munch munch) How
can this be crunchy and chewy AT THE SAME TIME!
Oof, I'm so full. I wanna have sex and have lots
of babies so they can enjoy the crunchy
chewy stuff.”
~Paul Wheaton
Organic lawn care for the cheap and lazy, Paul Wheaton

66. Wim van Egmond, Bioturbation with and without soil fauna

67. Mowing Lawn Turf, MSU State Extension & University of Nevada Cooperative Extension & Organic lawn care for the cheap and lazy, Paul Wheaton

68. New England Wildflower Society
Got shade?
Pennsylvania sedge feeds
up to three dozen species of
caterpillars

69. Barren strawberry (Waldstenia fragarioides) Mt. Cuba Center
this is may be the answer
to the persistent question about
evergreen native ground covers.
EVERYONE is looking for that native
alternative to pachysandra, vinca and
English Ivy. This, my friends, may
be what you are looking for.
~James Brown, New Moon Nursery

70. What about
weeds!

71. Humans loved
me until the
chemical companies
convinced them I
was a weed.

72. A weed is a plant
that’s mastered every
survival skill except for
learning how to grow in
rows.
~Doug Larson

73. Get to
know our
stories.
plantago lanceolata
(Oginii-waabigwaniin) was
considered one of the nine
sacred herbs of the ancient
Saxons.
Gardens All

74. Ron Guest Field of Hope, Flickr
What is this being
telling me?
What are ways I can listen?
Who are you?
Why are you here?
What have you brought us? Let’s get to know you and what
you're bringing.
What do you need?
What are your relationships? Who is your family?
How do you fit in?
Who do you dream of becoming?
~Modified from Robin Wall Kimmerer

75. Dandelions
attract beneficial
insects like me
Jean and Fred, Flickr

76. I also eat
pollen & nectar
Christo Anestev, Pixabay

77. We eat
200+ pests or
pest eggs a
week!
epitome, Pixabay
They
attract us
too!

78. If you want
me to have babies,
I need nectar,
pollen &
honeydew.
hedera.baltica, Flickr

79. Check out
my roots!
Robert Kourik, Dandelion

80. Small Footprint Family
USDA ranks me
in top four green
vegetables for overall
nutritional value.

81. Colleen Codekas, Grow Forage Cook Ferment
When I see a yard full of
weeds, it says to me, it’s a vibrant
yard… there’s more food growing where
people don’t ‘groom’ their yards with
chemicals
~UC Berkeley Professor Philip Stark

82. Try eating
your salad from
the sidewalk.
~Mark Bittman
Salad From the Sidewalk by Philip B. Stark, NY Times

83. Chickweed (Stellaria media)
Lamb’s Quarter (Chenopodium album)
Purslane (Portulaca oleracea) Cat’s Ear (Hypochaeris radicata) Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) Dead Nettle (Lamium purpureum)
Wood Sorrel (Oxalis) Chickweed (Stellaria media)

84. NY State IPM Program at Cornell University, Flickr
it is seldom the
rare, exotic, and beautiful
plant that proves the most
interesting, more often it is some
common, familiar, and despised weed
that is discovered to have
undreamed-of virtues.
~Euell Gibbons

85. Lori Carlson, Flickr
nectar of creeping charlie attracts
long-tongued bees primarily, including
honeybees, bumblebees, mason bees, a cuckoo
bee, a long-horned bee, an Anthophorine bee, and
small carpenter bees. Occasionally, the flowers
attract green metallic bees, bee flies, a Syrphid fly,
Sulfur and White butterflies, and skippers.
caterpillars of a polyphagous moth feed on the
foliage of Ground Ivy, while the larvae of Ground
Ivy Gall Wasp form galls on the stems,
petioles, or leaves.
~Illinois Wildflowers

86. Milla Ezzman, Siberian Cedar Land

87. Photo by Matt Lavin, Flickr
self heal
withers
乃東枯

88. No one needs a
surgeon who keep
Prunelle
~French proverb
Early settlers
called it “heart of
the Earth”
Ingijibinaa
Ogijibinaan
Very Great, Drawing Out One,
The Great Drawer-Outer

89. Wildness
matters more now than it ever
has. We’re urbanizing at a pace
unprecedented in human history… We have
to look at the landscapes we live in as
places where nature could be
[multispecies refugia].
~Thomas Rainer

90. Garden as if
life depended on it.
Because it does.
~Douglas Tallamy

91. But what will
the neighbours
think???
:Christine Sponchia, Pixabay

92. We
think it’s
awesome!
Pexels, Pixabay

93. [Landscape] need
not be understood as being
either territory or scenery; it can
also be conceived as a nexus of
community, justice, nature, and
environmental equity, a
contested territory.
~Kenneth Olwig
Tiny Forest Science Park, Utrechtse Biologen Vereniging

94. Think of
rewilding as an
embodied land
acknowledgement
supporting multispecies
resurgence.
Celebrate
no mow May by
rewilding your
lawn.