BarrieToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected]. Please include your full name, daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter is in response 'No Mow May? Yeah, maybe not in Ontario, says grass expert,' published April 29.
Sara Stricker, of the Guelph Turfgrass Institute, maintains that the movement to delay grass-cutting to June is harmful to lawns and wildlife.
Her warnings add to the endless examples of so-called experts fiddling while Rome burns.
The #NoMowMay is a token gesture just as the act itself is a token gesture. The real issue is to move away from lawns to gardens.
We now know that the air, water, land and noise pollution caused by gas lawn machines is harmful in so many ways.
Firstly, she warns that grass will grow too tall and that its growth will be stunted - in one month. Nonsense.
She fears that homeowners will need to use fertilizers, herbicides and excessive amounts of water to cure this ‘stunted’ growth.
Homeowners already pour on fertilizers and herbicides before the grass grows in the spring. She gives no advice on how to create a pollinator lawn, and her remark about the ‘snappy’ hashtag #NoMowMay reeks of cynicism.
However, her advice goes unnoticed anyway by most lawn owners I encounter. No one in our community refrained from cutting their lawns in May. I wonder what her real motives are for undermining this small movement.
Rozanne Stein
Collingwood
