Last month, I rashly undertook to take part in the No Mow May initiative in order to encourage wild flowers and pollinators into my garden. This is what happened when the lawn mower was locked up for a month.

This is really challenging! The grass is undeniably long. The borders are visually disappearing into the grass, and the grass is beginning to encroach on the borders. All definition in the garden has been lost. In order to stop mowing in my garden between 4 weekly intervals, I would have to redesign it entirely, which at this stage of the game really isn’t feasible.

Another disappointment is that no wildflowers have appeared in the lawn, not a single one. No doubt this is because of all the weedkiller, and maybe all the fertiliser, that has been applied over the past few years - that was hardly natural.

So, what to do? I can understand the need to cut back on the pollution of frequent mowing and lawn management. Even more so I recognise the need to protect the environment, our wild flowers, our insect life, our pollinators, for their own sakes’ but also for ours. And it has been lovely to see all wildflowers on the roadsides and in peoples’ front gardens during No Mow May - it has made Marden feel very rural.

So I really can’t go back to my old ways, but the way forward needs a lot of thought, and some experimentation. That is what I’m going to do through June. On the 1st of June, though, the lawn mower will come out of the shed, to the sound of cheers.