When one man went to mow...( with his dog Spot: Woof!), he did so in an environmentally friendly way, not that he knew that. He used a scythe and mowed the field for hay. That meant he mowed at the end of Summer, when the grass was high. The wild flowers in a meadow had been up, flowered and seeded by then. We adopt something of that practice with 'protected verges' by our roadsides in this village, cutting them at certain stages to encourage the wild flowers according to their needs.