BALTIMORE -- Jack Trimper has a list of all the native plants that grow in his yard — evening primrose, milkweed, fleabane — all scrawled in careful cursive, one below the other.
Each one emerged in earnest after Trimper started participating in “No Mow May.” For the month, he decided to let his yard grow wild, as part of a global movement aiming to create niches within once-carefully groomed cities and suburbs for early season pollinators and other wildlife.
He installed a hand-painted yard sign featuring the slogan, “No Mow May” with the words “for the bees.”
Everything seemed to be going fairly well. That is, until a notice appeared on his door May 11, stating his lawn was in violation of the county code.
It warned that if he failed to cut his grass within five days, he could be charged $200 per day — and the county could send out a contractor to mow it at his expense. Ultimately, the county decided to simply send him to a hearing where he could argue against the violation.
“It made me anxious for a while,” he said, “To think: ‘Oh, is this the day that I’m gonna have to confront the mower?’”
Trimper’s experience is likely far from uncommon. The county responds to some 18,000 code complaints each year, including plenty from residents frustrated by their neighbors’ lawn upkeep. But it illustrates the sometimes fraught process of bucking cultural norms — even in the name of the environment.
The University of Maryland Extension’s Home & Garden Information Center is among the industry groups trying to encourage Americans to embrace gardens full of native plants in lieu of carefully trimmed front lawns.
“It’s nothing but one species. It’s dark green, and it looks lush‚” said Jon Traunfeld, the center’s director. “That image has been burned into our consciousness as a nation — and it’s got to change.”
But residents who choose to simply embrace the unruly can face plenty of pushback from neighbors.
“People do get very irate,” Traunfeld said. “They think it’s going to attract rats and it looks bad and it’s going to take their property values down. So it can really create some pretty hard feelings.”
One such incident helped create a new Maryland law last year. In 2017, a Howard County family living in the Beech Creek community received a letter from their homeowners’ association, demanding they eliminate their pollinator garden, in place since 2004, in favor of turf grass. Ultimately, it took a court battle for the family to retain most of its garden.
“The bottom line is, this should have never happened,” said family member Janet Crouch during a Maryland General Assembly hearing last year.
House Bill 322, passed in 2021, prevents homeowners and condominium associations from imposing “unreasonable limitations on low-impact landscaping,” including rain gardens and pollinator gardens.
In Trimper’s case, Baltimore County Code Enforcement Chief Adam Whitlock decided to issue a citation for grass over 8 inches, allowing him to contest the violation at a hearing rather than submit a work order that would send a contractor to the home.
Whitlock said in a statement that although Trimper is “likely acting in good faith and has pure intentions,” code enforcers “cannot choose when to enforce the code and when not to.” Any decision to alter the code to allow for “No Mow May” would have to come through the County Council, he added.
With May coming to a close, Trimper said he might weed-whack or mow parts of his lawn, so the whole issue might be resolved by the time he participates in the hearing about his violation. But the experience has left him frustrated that he faced such headwinds for keeping the environment in mind.
He hopes to write to the County Council, urging it to grant county residents a lawn-mowing reprieve next May, with the goal of attracting and protecting bees, butterflies and birds alike.
“My goal is that next May, I don’t have to go through this again,” said Trimper, a former local teacher and current artist, who uses found objects to create sculptures of his own design.
The county’s Department of Environmental Protection and Sustainability does endorse residents creating “bee lawns,” by “embracing weeds and allowing clovers and dandelions to bloom in your grass,” according to a statement from the department.
But such lawns still must be kept to 3 inches, per county code, the statement says.
“You may consider installing a bee or insect house on your property, or providing bees and butterflies with water in a shallow container with sloping sides,” it reads.
Mikaela Boley, a home horticulture and master gardener coordinator for the University of Maryland Extension in Talbot County, said she admires the sentiment behind “No Mow May” but said residents should think about installing meadows or other lawn alternatives long-term, rather than just abandoning mowers for a month.
“Our lawns are made up of things that are largely non-native, and so when you let them go, it’s mostly those non-native things that continue to grow tall and then, you know, if you go back to mowing at the end of May, I’m not sure what kind of impact that has in the long term,” she said.
Boley said she frequently works with Eastern Shore homeowners to help them install native plant gardens capable of reducing their water and fertilizer and decreasing runoff, all while attracting pollinators facing dramatic declines.
“It’s really hard to change people’s perceptions of what a property should look like. And I think there are good designs out there to kind of help facilitate that movement,” she said.
