Lawns are great for pests and horrible for the environment. Yards with clover and less need for mowing favour friendly insect species and help the environment. The situation is clear and the solution is obvious: stop mowing your lawn.
You don’t need to take my word for it, you can take multiple researcher studies concluding that less mowing is good for good insects. Teenagers forced to mow their parent’s suburban lawns should start using this evidence to get out of chores.
The present study examines the effects of different mowing regimes on arthropod abundance and diversity by conducting meta-analyses of studies assessing the effect of mowing on arthropod abundance (46 datasets) and taxa richness (23 datasets) in urban environments. Due to a geographical bias in the literature, only data from the temperate, northern hemisphere are analyzed.
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Overall, the findings of the present meta-analysis strongly support the notion that a reduction in mowing frequencies in urban greenspaces benefits insect biodiversity.