By Julie Boudreau

The more I exchange with gardeners everywhere, the more I realize that I am not the only one with a selective lawn mower. Yes, many of us are trying by every possible way to mow the lawn as infrequently as possible. And, when we have to do it, we fall under the spell of the plants in bloom, or about to bloom, of our beautiful bio-diverse lawn.

No Mow May… No Mo’ Problems!

More and more municipalities are doing us a favour by joining the “No Mow May” program. The initial intention of this program is to give a helping hand to pollinators. Indeed, in spring, there is not an abundance of flowering plants. But, for fans of selective mowing, it’s a month of vacation!Technically, a beautiful flower garden doesn’t really rely on lawn dandelions to provide pollinators with an abundance of flowering plants, at all time. And curiously, in a well-established ecological lawn, there are not that many dandelions! Still, what a gift to watch the grass grow and wait…

Then, the Selection Begins!

In June, you finally have to start the lawn mower. In my area, the dandelions have finished blooming in June. And this is where my weakness manifests itself. All these treasures that my beautiful organic lawn contains, how can I mow them so brutally?
This patch of small wild strawberries! These daisies in buds! And this red clover so attractive to big bumblebees! Mow all this? Oh no! Impossible !
And that’s how I find myself mowing in a zigzag pattern and going around promising flowers. “You forgot a spot there”, the neighbours will tell me. Yes, but no! It’s all part of my plan!
Every week, my selective mower offers a 100% random and unpredictable result. It even varies annually, depending on the location of the current favourites.

Daisies in bloom… which would never have seen the light of day if… Image: Julie Boudreau

And It Continues…

Every month, new flowers take over. Hawkweeds (Hieracium spp.), hawkbits (Leontodon spp.), yarrows (Achillea spp.) and more clovers! And if I’m lucky, I’ll see one or two little broad-leaved helleborine plants (Epipactis helleborine) appear.
Each week, my mower makes a new selection. It mows down what has finished flowering and effortlessly bypasses the next stars of this living picture.

Orange hawkweed. Image: Krzystof Ziarnek sur Wikimedia Commons


The relationship I have with my lawn is somewhat poetic. I am in a constant state of contemplation and wonder at everything that grows there, without any intervention. I practically fall into a philosophical dream, trying to understand why such a thing grows in this part of the lawn and not elsewhere. Why didn’t that other plant grow back last year? But here it is this year in a completely different spot.
Like tectonic plates in motion, the flower spots migrate. The selective mower goes from surprise to surprise, because it never follows the same route.

No, dear neighbours, I have not forgotten a spot there. It is my lawn mower that chooses its path.

The epipactis false-hellebore is a curious orchid that grows wherever it wants. It seems to forget that orchids are usually picky. Image: H. Zell on Wikimedia Commons

Julie Boudreau is a horticulturist who trained at the Institut de technologie agroalimentaire in Saint-Hyacinthe, Québec. She’s been working with plants for more than 25 years. She has published many gardening books and hosted various radio and television shows. She now teaches horticulture at the Centre de formation horticole of Laval. A great gardening enthusiast, she’s devoted to promoting gardening, garden design, botany and ecology in every form. Born a fan of organic gardening, she’s curious and cultivates a passion for all that can be eaten. Julie Boudreau is “epicurious” and also fascinated by Latin names.

3 comments on “My Selective Mower

  1. I have the same difficulties but The Invasive Weed Council of B.C. would have us get rid of most of these plants. Am I the only one who questions the status of these plants in some areas? I certainly see orange hawkweed growing on roadsides in abundance so I get that even though it is so pretty. It is really difficult when our ecology varies so much and generalizations are made about plants which sometimes can behave themselves if looked after, rather like children!! Mountain Bluet is a big topic around here at the moment.

  2. See also
    https://laidbackgardener.blog/2021/07/22/the-orchid-nobody-wants-2/
    By Larry Hodgson

    Orchids are such desirable plants that’s hard to imagine there are any that don’t attract many favorable reviews … but there is indeed one and it’s Epipactis helleborine or broad-leaved helleborine. This widely distributed Eurasian terrestrial orchid long ago made it to the New World….

  3. heathergrammie

    I wondered what the orange flowers in my lawn were. Thanks for identifying them as Hawkweed. I’ve done a bit of research and while I had been mowing around them I’ll be mowing them down today. According to several solid sources, the Hawkweed is an allelopathic plant, which means its pollen is carried by bees and other insects to other plants where it sterilizes them. For this reason it’s considered to be aggressively invasive and it’s best not to encourage it.

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