Check out this great research recently done by the Forest Service outlining how the simple act of mowing your lawn less frequently increases native bee abundance and diversity:
They found that mowing every 3 weeks had the greatest effect but every 2 weeks also improved the abundance of native bees found on lawns. I read through the list of species they found and was astonished to see the diversity that they collected on lawns! When I think of a lawn, I definitely do not think of all these species. It is very encouraging to see that even a simple act like this can bring so much native bees to lawns.
In some cities, ordinances require people to keep their lawn at a certain height or be ticketed or fined. Lawns that may look a little scraggly to our human eyes are actually refugia in an urban/suburban landscape for insects, especially pollinators. I hope we start considering why we have all this green lawn space, 40 million acres in the US, why it "has to be maintained" in a certain way or we might be seen as the crazy neighbor, and question where the ubiquity of the green lawn comes from. It requires a lot of herbicide to keep a green lawn, not mention a whole lot of water and a whole lot of mowing--it just seems silly. We could be taking advantage of this space, reducing our workloads, water use, chemical use (and exposure), and enjoying more birds and bees in our yards. It just makes sense! So spread the word: be a lazy lawnmower.
A house with a lawn full of wildflowers on Sullivan's Island, SC. I could hardly contain my excitement when I saw this house! No more mowing, fertilizer, herbicide, pesticides, provides food and habitat for beneficial insects AND it's beautiful--what if we all had lawns more like this??
Bombus griseocollis/brown-belted bumble bee, one of the species found in this study that is also found on watermelon farms in my study--it's a common cosmopolitan species with a large geographic range
*Lerman, S. B., Contosta, A. R., Milam, J., & Bang, C. (2018). To mow or to mow less: Lawn mowing frequency affects bee abundance and diversity in suburban yards. Biological Conservation, 221, 160-174.