Freedom Not to Mow

The Freedom Not to Mow campaign, proudly launched by the Restoring Nature Alliance, champions the autonomy of individuals to maintain their lawns as they see fit and promotes sustainable landscaping practices that support biodiversity, reduce negative environmental impact, conserve resources, and respect personal choice. Our mission is to advocate for policies and cultural shifts that recognize and protect the right to choose alternative, eco-friendly lawn management techniques without fear of penalties or social stigma.

Last summer, we at Birdhouse.farm experienced the worst of “mowing/weed ordinances” when the tiny community we reside in decided they were going to come in and mow down a good portion of two years of our work transforming 6 acres of ground from mostly weeds and lawn to a diverse garden, prairie and habitat for local plants and wildlife. (Wichita Eagle story) Our property is very near a giant wetlands complex (Quivira National Wildlife Refuge) and we were excited about giving this economically depressed area another reason for tourists to visit and hopefully be inspired to rewild their own little corners of the world.

We were devastated that the local government would come in and destroy what we had built for the good of nature and the local community. We’re still not sure why they did it (political?boredom?attachment to the status quo?) but we were determined to make something good come from it. Our team has a lot of experience in natural disaster recovery (Greensburg story) and so we took our lessons from that and started rebuilding immediately. We turned a big parcel of what had been prairie into wetlands (un-mowable!) and have been strategizing what we could do on a larger scale to prevent the government from bullying people like us trying to tend to  our land to heal nature. After much study of the “unlawning” and “rewilding” movements we think we have found a niche where we can help boost efforts to change antiquated laws of cities and towns and HOA policies relating to lawns and gardens.