Hide Your Weed Wacker! Lock Up Your Pesticides! It’s No Mow May.

If you live on a decent-sized property in a major Middle American city or a grass-covered suburb in the Northeast, there’s a good chance your local government is encouraging you to keep your lawnmower locked up right now. It’s “No Mow May”—a month to reconsider what your lawn can really do for you and the broader environment, and a hot spring trend that has steadily bloomed over the last three years to lawn-rich communities across the United States.

More and more people are saying it, literally: Neglecting the mow is the way to go. In fact, while letting your lawn lie fallow, you can also cut back on all the other resources they demand of us: the staggering amounts of water, the smelly and harmful pesticides, the overpriced fertilizers from your local department store. Sure, it may not seem the most intuitive concept at first. Allowing the grass to grow unseasonably high, even for just a month, means unchecked weed growth, the odd mole or rabbit, and surely a side-eye from visitors who associate neatly trimmed lawns with civic orderliness. But there’s a good reason why No Mow Day has become a thing. And why even if your town isn’t officially marking it, you should start...