BBOWT and the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) are calling on gardeners to ‘Bring Your Lawn to Life’ this summer.

The charities are encouraging gardeners to experiment with a new-look lawn in 2023 for the benefit of wildlife and the wider environment.

Raising the blades on the mower, cutting the grass less and embracing daisies, dandelions and clover are among the simple ways to make life easier and help nature at the same time. People are even encouraged to grow container lawns if they don't have much space.

Lawns left to grow long are shown to help mitigate flooding by better soaking up rainwater, counter the heat island effect in urban areas through their cooling properties and capture pollutants.

They are also better at resisting browning during dry spells than short grass owing to their longer roots. This means that their benefits continue into the height of summer, and provide all-important habitat for a whole host of insects including ants, bees and butterflies.

Five ways to love your lawn this year:

· Reduce the frequency of mowing to once every three to four weeks to allow flowers such as dandelion and speedwell to bloom and help pollinators.
· Keep some areas short as pathways, sunbathing spots, and foraging areas for worm-eating birds. For the rest, let the grass grow a little longer, offering shelter to grasshoppers and other insects. In turn, these creatures are food for frogs, birds, and bats.
· Allow parts of your lawn to grow long for the whole summer so that caterpillars can feed and transform into butterflies and moths.
· Turn a blind eye to the odd bare patch within a lawn as these provide sites for ground nesting bees.
· If you do want a luscious green carpet, consider growing hardy yarrow within your lawn or, where there is limited footfall, experiment with a tapestry lawn and grow herbs and flowers such as chamomile and creeping thyme.

Estelle Bailey, Chief Executive of BBOWT, said:
“Gardeners have spent too long battling nature to maintain lifeless green carpets of closely-cropped grass - but now nature is in crisis and not enough is being done to reverse the terrible decline in the UK's biodiversity. We want to see 30 per cent of land well-managed for nature by 2030 and our gardens are a vital part of that wild jigsaw.

"It’s time to help nature and the climate by letting lawns live wilder and supporting a Serengeti in your back yard. It's an easy thing to do, but a fantastically effective way to help create more nature everywhere."

BBOWT recently announced that it was partnering with Oxford Garden Design to create a show garden at this year's RHS Malvern Spring Festival. The installation will demonstrate a host of wildlife-friendly gardening techniques, but also sustainable methods such as using building waste, reclaimed material and untreated timbers. Read more on that story here.

With private gardens in the UK making up a bigger area than all of the country's nature reserves combined, BBOWT is hoping to help inspire a home-grown revolution that can create a giant jigsaw puzzle of wild spaces.

Helen Bostock, Senior Wildlife Specialist at the RHS, says:
“Lawns, while central to many garden designs, are often overlooked as important ecosystems in favour of the plants in beds that border them. But they’re home to a huge amount of wildlife and help mitigate the impact of climate change. We want to inspire people to get up close and personal with their lawns this year, discover what can be found in their swathes of green and dabble with new, more hands-off means of management.”

For more information on the benefits of lawns in gardens download a copy of the Bring Your Lawn to Life guide. The public can find it on the Wild About Gardens website wildaboutgardens.org.uk