Rewilding Your Yard: Beyond No Mow May
While not mowing your lawn in May is a start towards supporting pollinators, it still falls short of helping them survive in the future. Rewilding your yard goes beyond No Mow May by including native plants arranged in attractive pollinator corridors that provide food, shelter, and connectivity year-round. Then, even small yards can become part of a larger network that supports bees, butterflies, birds, and other wildlife, ultimately building healthier local ecosystems.
What Is Yard Rewilding?
Yard rewilding is about so much more than letting the dandelions grow in May. It’s about turning traditional turf lawns, paved areas, and otherwise manicured landscapes with poor biodiversity values into thriving habitats for native animals and plants. Rewilding is about supporting native biodiversity and improving sustainability in our own yards.
Beyond No-Mow May — Rewilding All Year
While some may see No Mow May as admirable for supporting pollinators, sadly, it falls far short of being effective in the long term.
The first problem with No Mow May is that pollinators don’t only come out in May. Pollinators live in your yard all year long, and may be active for 8-12 months of the year, depending on your climate. This means you need pollinator habitat year-round, not just in May.
The second part of the problem is that No Mow May still encourages turf lawns, which are only one or a few grass species, and the odd weed that tolerates mowing. Those very few species cannot support our pollinators, many of whom rely on specific native plants for food, habitat, or to complete their life cycle.
Why It Matters for Pollinators
Recent studies by NatureServe show that one-fifth of our pollinators are at risk of extinction, and that rises to 34.7% for our native bees. Why? The main culprits are habitat loss, widespread pesticide and herbicide use, and a changing climate.
Pollinators need a wide diversity of native plants for food and habitat. When you plant a traditional lawn, you create a monoculture. Add to that constant mowing so it never flowers, and people call it a “biodiversity desert” even though, in reality, deserts actually have more biodiversity than traditional lawns.
Understanding Pollinator Corridors
While digging up your entire lawn and planting native plants would make your yard very popular with the pollinators, it’s not entirely necessary. Rewilding doesn’t always mean messy either. Instead, you can create pollinator corridors, connected patches of native plants that allow bees, butterflies, and other pollinators to live and move across fragmented landscapes.
How to Create a Pollinator Corridor
Creating pollinator corridors is simple since its only requirements are connectivity and native plants. They can be connected garden beds or create 2-foot-wide strips along footpaths and driveways, as well as around your veggie beds and fruit trees (which also reduces pest pressure and increases productivity). Corridors make it easy to fit pollinator habitat into even the tidiest aesthetic yard.
Why Connectivity is Important
Creating strips of habitat throughout your yard and connecting them to your neighbor’s yard or nearby green spaces is essential for connectivity. Connected paths throughout large, fragmented ecosystems reduce population isolation, increasing biodiversity, gene flow, and long-term survival.
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Why Native Plants are Important
Native plants are the foundation of any successful rewilding or pollinator corridor. Since they evolved with our pollinators, they offer the best nectar, pollen, and habitats. They’re also adapted to our climate, so they require little water or maintenance, making many suitable for xeriscaping (low or no-water landscaping).
Exotic ornamentals too often offer no nectar, bloom at the wrong time, or are the wrong shape or size to facilitate our pollinators. They also typically require more maintenance and water.
Staggered and Varied Blooms
Just as we need food and habitat all year-round, so do pollinators. As long as flowers bloom in your climate, pollinators will be there, attracted to different flower colors and shapes.
So, choose flowers of various colors, shapes, sizes, and bloom times. Find some that bloom in early spring, late spring, some that survive the heat of summer, and others that survive chilly fall nights. Not only does this support our pollinators, but year-round blooms also bring color and beauty to your yard.
Which native plants should you choose? That depends entirely on where you live. Contact your local gardening club, or the National Wildlife Federation’s Native Plant Finder.
Other Habitat Considerations
Pollinators also need water. Shallow dishes on the ground are perfect for butterflies and bees. Hummingbirds will drink water from a regular bird bath and are better served by native bell-shaped flowers than sugar water in plastic feeders.
Furthermore, skipping pesticides and herbicides is essential. These toxins cannot discriminate between “good bugs” and “bad bugs” and will kill them all.
Preserving and protecting habitat is equally critical. Always leave dead flowers standing for the winter as beneficial insects use them for food and habitat. Leaf, rock, or brush piles also make good habitat, as do logs, stumps, and bee houses. Finally, a patch of bare soil is essential, as many native bees and other beneficial insects are ground-dwellers.
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Final Thoughts — A Yard That Gives Back
Rewilding your yard is one of the best ways to support our pollinators. By moving beyond temporary efforts like No Mow May and focusing on connected habitats, native plants, and staggered seasonal blooms, you create a landscape that gives back year-round. In return, you get a healthier, more resilient, and more colorful yard, and the reward of knowing your space is part of something bigger. And, to make your own home safer and more sustainable, consider a home backup system like the EcoFlow DELTA Pro Ultra X.