That will be the end of them for this year and if you mow them too often the end of them full stop. You either need to let the area of the lawn they are in be left un-mown or move them to a border.

Lucky you! Mowing them will stop them flowering and will, eventually, kill the cowslips. Can you just mow small areas of the lawn where they are not growing?

put it down to a wild area

Why not weedle them out and transplant elsewhere, or do you have a large area of them and would it be a laboureous job.julien.

What a lovely excuse for not mowing! I'd love to see cowslips on my lawn. I would nurture the area as a wildflower meadow.

I adore cowslips and I would say dig some of them out and pop them into your border where they can seed freely.

So glad I read this question as there is a grassy bank just along the road from our village that heaves with primroses and cowslips at this time of year. The trouble is, in about 6 weeks or so, along comes one of those horrible "smash-it-to-bits machines" from the Council which trims EVERYTHING back regardless. The cowslips do return, but I think I'll pop along there with my trusty garden fork and 'rescue' a few before the machine gets here! ;o)

That's great, thank you all for your advice. We only have a couple of cowslips and our lawn is not huge - so we could dig them out ... and maybe we will at some point, but we quite like them where they are amongst the daisies and buttercups, so will just mow around them for now. Our lawn has got considerably smaller over the years as we've developed more room for flowers and fruit, dug a pond which is now in inhabited by newts and keep cutting off corners to grow vegetables in raised beds. All good fun.

Again, thanks for the comments, I shall certainly call on your help again when I have more questions.