No Mow May
LJMU is taking part in No Mow May for a third year as part of our commitment to enhancing biodiversity on our estate.
No Mow May is a national initiative from Plantlife which asks people not to mow their lawns throughout the month.
To support the campaign, we are leaving five areas of lawn to grow:
- Byrom Street (next to Max Perutz building)
- Student Life Building
- John Foster Building
- Tithebarn Building
- John Lennon Art and Design Building (garden)
Information signs will be in place in each of the spaces.
Benefits to wildlife
There are many benefits to not mowing the grass such as tackling pollution, reducing urban heat extremes and locking away atmospheric carbon below ground. However, one of the major benefits is helping to tackle the long-term loss of valuable habitats like flower-rich meadows.
The loss of wildflower meadows across Britain has meant that many of our pollinating insects, such as bees, butterflies and bugs – species which we rely on to help us grow food, to feed our wild birds, bats and hedgehogs, and generally help our habitats to thrive – are in decline. However, leaving the grass encourages wildflowers to grow which is beneficial for our pollinator species and wildlife more generally.
We participated in No Mow May for the first time in 2024 which helped us to determine a baseline value for our grassland habitats by revealing the multiple species which our lawns consist of. This then helped us to develop our Biodiversity Delivery Plan, where we set numerous targets, such as to:
- Increase species richness by +10% by 2030, against 2025 baseline
- Manage our habitats towards ‘Good’ condition, as described in the Natural England condition assessment criteria
Within the plan we also made a commitment to conduct annual monitoring of several species groups, including pollinators, and No Mow May is a key activity that helps us to do this.
To find out more information about biodiversity at LJMU and to access our Biodiversity Delivery Plan, visit our biodiversity webpage.
