Three years ago, I wrote about my plan to keep a yard of wildflowers by mowing just once a year, in early spring. But, after a glorious first year, the yard came to fill with much tall grass and few wildflowers. This year, I have a new plan. While mowing, when I come across a nice patch of wildflowers, I mow around it. If at the next mowing the patch still shows bloom or promise, I keep it. During the last mowing, as I came up on a patch of clover and ground ivy, I weighed whether it had bloom enough worth saving. Then I saw a bee working the flowers there, and chose to mow around that patch. In this way, I hope to keep a mowed lawn with wildflower islands, enjoyed by both human and bee.
A Bee Movie -- Bees on the Wildflower Islands
Wildflower Islands
Ground Ivy, Clover, Yellow Wood Sorrel
Bumble Bee on Ground Ivy
More over the jump ...
Orange Hawkweed
Alfalfa
Daisy Fleabane
Buttercup
Queen Anne's Lace
(From The Paragraph.) [Sources & Notes]
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By Quinn Hungeski, TheParagraph.com, Copyright (CC BY-ND) 2014