Due to other current commitments I am pausing working in the churchyard for the foreseeable future and therefore also pausing writing this blog.
Hopefully I will be back in the future, thank you for reading the blog and thank you to the various people who have stopped by on a Saturday morning just to say hello or give plants or seeds or simply just time, the most precious thing anyone can give.
Thank you.
"the days are longer, the first snowdrops are out, and Imbolc is nearly upon us"
I find February the hardest month of the year, starting with short days frequently wet and cold, it may be the shortest month but it feels lengthy and uncompromising in its harshness. However according to the Celtic Calendar spring is already here! About midway between the Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox is Imbloc. The term is from the Irish language and translates as 'in the belly' interpreted as a time when signs of life begin to appear and the dead February landscape starts to sprout green shoots bulbs being the first, in the churchyard among the dead leaves of Autumn and spent stems of last years plants the empty husks of seed heads still intact clumps of Snowdrops add a bright splash, elsewhere under the bare tree canopy amongst the ivy Dwarf Daffodils have colonised from a few pots planted a couple of years after they had finished flowering.
All encouraging signs and with the evenings getting lighter as well.
In a previous post I touched on the winter light levels in the churchyard and a couple of weeks ago we had the Winter Solstice the point in the year where daylight is shortest, from here on the days get longer, more hours of daylight although to me the first few weeks actually seem shorter. In these dark winter days it can seem never to get fully light, days of low light sometimes though the day starts crisp and bright and there is another kind of low light, that bright sunshine often in the early morning tinged with dawns amber glow. It was one such morning when I was a passenger being driven around Church Street South bordering the churchyard and I was amazed by the spectacle of low intense sun beams illuminating the vertical faces of several gravestones, all gravestones face east in a churchyard so the full impact of the low light illuminated one particular gravestone, every detail in remarkable clarity, the angular clear cut script, the mossy surface all illuminated in a warm light, quite spectacular, quite special.
Wishing you all a Happy New Year and a peaceful 2026
Recently I was given half a dozen back issues of various gardening magazines one dated November 2024 contained an article where two people, an ecological gardener and a lawn expert argue for or against removing dead autumn leaves from our lawns. The lawn expert understandably was against leaving leaves on lawns as it can suffocate and kill the grass however he did acknowledge that leaves excel as compost. The case put for leaving leaves in place to break down was most interesting and informative. Leaf drop is an ancient adaptation first appearing around 100 million years ago in the Late Cretaceous period so this 'mechanism' is perhaps the oldest carbon capture on our planet as soil can hold 30 percent more carbon if autumn leaves are left to rot, the resulting carbon feeds the soil food Web particularly mycorrhizal fungus which in turn improves the trees ability to take up water, also the layer of rotting material helps insulate the soil in winter this in turn results in a better soil structure and helps hibernating insects from drowning-insects required as a food source for ground feeding birds. Of course we clear the leaves from paths and gravestones bagging them in jute bags piled to rot down. The result is a fantastic environment for worms who reward us with our own pile of lovely compost to use when planting up. A secondary advantage is zero packaging and zero road miles for delivery.
Wishing everyone a peaceful Christmas.
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In the early part of 2024 we were approached by a filmmaker who was looking for a small project to film, the driving point of this was you did not have to have a huge costly project in hand to make a contribution to nature conservation and so our churchyard was selected as a subject to film. A few members of our team were interviewed on camera, the interviews were conducted inside the church, there was no common agreed script or response those interviewed answered giving their honest view on the project. The result was as a whole an interesting perspective.
The film is fifteen minutes long.
The link to the film is here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzNo9hvUh2M
That sounds very horticultural but in fact it was an opportunity to revisit our ongoing vision for the churchyard and explain to a complete stranger what we are trying to achieve, what our goals are and where we are along that pathway to date. The stranger was in fact a journalist from Holland and they had picked up our involvement from the organisation Caring For God's Acre, who liase and offer help to churchyards in the form of suggestions of how to plan and monitor what you propose to undertake, invaluable in getting a project underway, focusing on a week by week seasonal guide so everything flows in a logical fashion. They also advise on looking at the Heritage of the churchyard and Caring for that, this we do cleaning and uncovering graves that have been either partly or wholly hidden for years. It's a sobering fact that if all the churchyards in the UK did something however small towards this we would end up with a conjoined area approaching the size of a small National Park.
This weekend saw the usual clearing up activities and also the planting of Wild Garlic a brilliant plant for early in the year pollinators.
Recently I was away in Mid Wales for a break., a very rural part of the UK with a myriad of back roads and lanes only carrying light occasional local traffic and so there was ample opportunity to stand and admire the hedgerows a collage of various wild species all woven together with Hawthorn and other shrubbery in front wonderful verge and sometimes ditch, needless to say there was the constant presence of insects flying from flower head to flowerhead searching out pollen. It was this standing observing and appreciating that made me think of our churchyard and how often do we stop and stand to appreciate it. I have heard many professional gardeners on TV and radio say just that, take time to stand, absorb and appreciate. Then yesterday along came a dozen pictures into my inbox taken in the churchyard by a team member that capture perfectly the wonderful collage of colours against the stonework and railings. The beauty of these pictures is also seeing the churchyard through someone else's perspective. I make no apologies for including four of these lovely pictures this month.
Two recent things brought insects into focus for me again, one was a trip to Lincolnshire in May where the weather driving down was very warm and on arrival I observed the the front of the car had more dead bugs on than I had seen for years. The second was the return at home of Swifts screaming around the house in an aerial display that would not disgrace the red arrows. Two indicators that we have more insects about in general than recent years. Swifts feed in flight on flying insects such as hoverflies. There is a national movement to put up more Swift boxes and even incorporate swift habitats in the form of special bricks in new builds. Old Glossop Residents Association who we work closely with are very keen on providing Swift habitats locally. Hoverflies feed on nectar as do other insects but unlike most insects they need to feed on flatter flower heads or Umbellifers broad flowerheads made up of lots of little flowers like Cow Parsley. So Umbellifers are on the planting list! Finally it was interesting to note that Chris Packham on Springwatch this year remarked that the insect population was up. All good news and fingers crossed it is not a blip.
Things have been happening in the churchyard, on a sad but realistic note in terms of safety we have had to have the branches removed from a tree because they were diseased and the main trunk is all that remains standing, on the plus side the removal of tree canopy means we have a whole area next to the path which now gets more sunlight and means therefore we can plant out some species to attract pollinators. Elsewhere we have Foxgloves or Digitalis popping up between the gravestones and adjacent to the path. It has been a long time wish to establish Foxgloves and get the cycle of seed to plants working. Foxgloves are biannual, setting seed, germinating and then finally flowering in the second year before setting seed and dying back in the autumn of the second year. If we have succeeded in getting this cycle established then it is very exciting and gratifying to observe the bees buzzing around to collect the pollen and nectar. In the meantime I have been looking into how we can attract more butterflies in fact the new area I mentioned before would be ideal to develop and plant out with sympathetic plant species.
Until next time.....
April has seen some decent weather and it has been nice to work in the churchyard with the sun on your back. After the success of the sweet peas last year we decided to tidy around the frame and put some wood around the bottom to retain more compost therefore hopefully being more resilient to dry weather, the wood used was windfall from around the churchyard therefore giving the natural look we aim for. Elsewhere we have continued clearing between grave slab edges particularly where they are narrow gaps making excellent planting areas for plants tolerant of this type of habitat also they nicely soften the edges and being thymes are excellent for pollinators.
March has been relatively dry and this has had an unforseen advantage in that a couple of the graves that on preliminary investigation last year looked difficult to clean with a wet matted mass of roots and compacted leaf mould on the surface, however the dry state meant we could separate the compost and roots enabling us to trim the roots back. A light scrub and the surface is perfectly legible. The first one we have tidied up in this way is the grave of one Richard Lee of Hadfield , research reveals little on his background apart from the fact he was a wood turner, a busy occupation making spools for the cotton mills, the second one further up the churchyard is one Michael Jackson of Glossop died 20th January 1847 we still need to clean the surface of this one and do some research. Elsewhere we have planted out some Allium bulbs 'in the green' as they say, a number of varieties but one in particular I am looking forward to seeing is a very tall white variety called appropriately enough Everest. Until next time.
I am an early riser so the progress to lighter mornings is something I look forward to, this February it seems to have taken longer for the days to become lighter however we are now definitely at that point at the end of the month. The light in the churchyard always interests me with the effect of no tree canopy on a sunny day things are obviously lighter and plants start to come into growth, bulbs push through and elsewhere the new growth has lovely fresh shades of green particularly the honeysuckle rambling over the dead hedge. In the lower churchyard one of our team has done a splendid job of removing dead winter grass revealing a splendid view of snowdrops etc. Our various varieties of Alliums planted in pots last Autumn are doing very well and are ready to plant out which brings me to the point time to get some seeds sown under cover in fact another team member has sown some sweet Pea seeds harvested from last year's crop. As these were so successful last year we intend to make and erect a bigger growing frame. All very encouraging.
January, the month that is 'midwinter' and it has lived up to that with a good mixed bag of cold wet and wintery weather with few Saturdays fit for working in the churchyard which is frustrating but a sunny Saturday morning was gratefully seized and quite a lot of clearing up was achieved and equally gratifying to observe the shoots of bulbs bravely pushing up shoots. A lot of last seasons leaves were cleared up and bagged, particularly from graves and the path opposite the South Porch door. Pausing for a mug of tea I was amused by the antics of a Blackbird and Robin rooting along the freshly cleared path obviously unearthing something worth eating.
The colour of Springtime is in the flowers; the colour of Winter is in the imagination. Terri Guillemets.
I am writing this on the last day of December 2024 so the shortest day the 21st has passed and we continue the long journey through Winter and into Spring. My Gardener's Almanac by Mr Alan Titchmarsh (a treasury of wisdom and inspiration through the year) also laments the lack of colour and suggests looking through seed catalogues for inspiration for the coming growing season and this has not been lost on us, we have collected together packets of seeds for sowing in springtime, with every intention of increasing the size of our Sweet Pea display. I put the opening quote on this entry because normally I would expect just so but imagine our delight on looking around the churchyard and finding the odd spot of colour here and there. I leave you with some pictures.
Wishing everyone all the very best for 2025 from The Friends of Old Glossop Churchyard Team.
Apart from clearing away leaves etc November and indeed late Autumn seems a good time to tidy up around the gravestones and get around to the list of jobs. The Braddock grave that sited under the yew tree opposite the South Porch ( see a earlier post 'uncovering the past') sits lower than the bank of soil on three sides, it was always our intention to put some boards around the edge to retain the soil keeping the gravestone surface free from debris and so using some upcycled old boards this has now been done enabling us to plant up right to the edge. Another job has been to plant up a few pots with Allium bulbs which means we can plant them out 'in the green' in Springtime.
John Clare one of the great English poets wrote of the seasons and in particular Autumn.
Nature now spreads around in dreary hue. A pall to cover all that summer knew; Yet in the poets solitary way; Some pleasing objects for his praise delay;
John Clare, The Shepherd's Calender (October) 1827.
John Clare expresses his sadness at the passing of summer but encourages us to look around and take pleasure in the colours the berries and the conkers on the path, the late flowering plants adding a splash of colour against the tall wands of grass. And so it is in the churchyard with the Calendula making such a bold splash of orange against the tall wands of grass and colours of Autumn.
On the corner where the path down from Church Street South meets the West side of the church building we have planted Wallflowers, a different variety this year, Harlequin, multi coloured so a splash of colour and lovely scent to look forward to next spring.
One of the aspects I personally like about working in the churchyard is the variety of jobs and the pleasure of seeing an area transformed I was not expecting a job to literally drop at my feet though! An exceptionally strong wind lasting a couple of days left the churchyard littered with broken branches, so armed with a bow saw, croppers and secateurs we set about clearing up, the bigger wood will be used to add edges to planting areas and has been stacked on one side, the brush wood was neatly piled and made into a dead hedge, another winter habitat. Which reminds me, we must clean out the bird boxes. Elsewhere a replacement frame has been put around the sign next to the South Porch so it seemed a good time to tidy that area and plant up some urns we have been given with black grass (Ophiopogon planiscapus) that has lovely white or violet flowers in spring.
As Sylvia Plath wrote, August is a time of in-betweeness, summer is on the wane and the month of September the start of Autumn is around the corner. Looking around the churchyard things are going over, turning to seed but there is still plenty to do not forgetting as Alan Titchmarsh said to find time to stand and enjoy the last flowers of summer and I did just that standing by the sweet peas enjoying their heady scent and watching the pollinators also attracted by that very same scent. Elsewhere there has been time to tidy up and our work area at the side of the church is better organised with our water butt having a couple of additions and a tool storage rack made from upcycled wood.
The flowers around the churchyard are a joy to behold! The spring wild flowers have been and gone to be replaced by other seasonal perrenial and annual plants, all annuals we have grown from seed, the Cosmos and Nicotiana in tall pots against the church building add a lovely splash of colour and the sweet peas in the frame opposite the West Door are simply fantastic, not just because we grew them from seed but also the scent is lovely, they are old fashioned heritage varieties that have that heady scent from years gone by, several people have mentioned to us how this takes them back to years ago when relatives usually grandparents used to grow them in the back garden and put bunches of them in the house filling each room with their scent, one of the most powerful memory stimulants and of course the pollinators are busy around them. What's not to like as they say.
All thanks to the hard work of one of us preparing the ground and building the willow frame. Thank you.
Elsewhere Calendula and Poppies have been planted between gravestones the Calendula adding that lovely 'pop' of orange.
