Reflections

It is almost exactly one year since I started writing this blog, an appropriate moment to look back on the past twelve months. Much has been achieved in that time, thank you to everyone who has helped in many different ways. Donating plants and seeds, supplying history notes and drawings, coming along on a Saturday morning to join in with the gardening. All of these contributions are greatly appreciated.

A couple of Wednesdays ago the churchyard was inspected as part of All Saints application for Eco Church Gold Award. Having taken the inspection team on a tour of the Churchyard looking at all we have achieved so far and listening to our plans for the future I am pleased to say we have been awarded Gold. Thank you to everyone who has helped us achieve this landmark.

If you are walking through the churchyard on a Saturday morning do stop by to say hello.

I wish everyone all the very best for 2023.

Leaves & Bulbs

November and the annual job of sweeping up and clearing away piles of leaves. Wherever possible our policy is to recycle or compost and this year we are trying out collecting the leaves together in Jute sacks. With the leaves compressed down in each sack they are then stored in an area where rain will fall on them and they can compost down, the jute itself breaks down so we should be left with a nice crumbly compost to use on planting areas.

At the top of the path leading down from Church Street South an area has been cleared, uncovering a grave slab buried under years of leaf mould. To the right of the grave slab the cleared area has been planted with 100 in Hyacinthoides non-scripta or English native Bluebells. These will hopefully establish and multiply in the coming years.

October

 I write this on the day the clocks have gone back by an hour. Light for working in the churchyard will naturally be less with the shorter days but we will gain some light as the trees shed their leaves this Autumn and this will be a major part of our November work sweeping and keeping the paths through the churchyard clear. Despite rainy days this month has been good, work has continued clearing away and planting up, most of the areas between the gravestones in the lower churchyard are choked with grass which leaves little scope for anything to grow. Carefully clearing these areas is a painstaking job carefully saving bulbs and other plants, where there are no flowering plants we will be filling in with varieties that will spread and flower. The first picture is one such area carefully cleared and planted up with several Geum variety Banana Daiquiri. On the far side to the right of the main or West door grass on the bank has been raked to remove accumulated thatch, and expose the soil. Yellow Rattle seeds have been sown which will hopefully germinate and spread providing a source of pollen. Yellow Rattle is parasitic on grass roots so hopefully it will establish. 

Bug Hotel

Earlier this year in line with our objective of creating habitats for wildlife we decided to identify a suitable site and build a bug hotel. Fortunately there is plenty of information out there to help in designing and building a suitable structure. Some features we wanted to incorporate were a structure of reasonable size and also a green roof to be planted with Sedums. We collected pallets that were surplus and destined for recycling all of the same size and old bricks for spacing. Uprights were added to the corners for stability and a tray with lining and drainage to form the roof. Finally it was filled with various materials to create nooks and crannies for insects to crawl into. As a finishing touch one of our team painted and added a panel on the front depicting various insects. 

Ash Trees

We have had to have three trees felled in the lower churchyard opposite the porch. The trees were of the common Ash species Fraxinus Excelsior, common Ash can fall victim to the fungus Hymenoscyphus Fraxineus first scientifically described in 2006. The first signs the disease is present is a loss of the tree canopy caused by crown die back. Once fifty percent of the canopy is lost it is unlikely the tree will recover and also the tree is also unable to resist other diseases. The only remedy currently is to cut the effected tree down. The fungus has no effect on humans or animals just a danger of falling branches. Because of the difficulty of accessing the effected trees a fourth tree, a Sycamore had to be felled to enable a crane to be used to support the trees during the felling operation.

The Churchyard now has a more open aspect in the cleared area allowing more light in and we have four stumps which we may incorporate into planting providing a different habitat.

Hotter than July

As I write this we are experiencing a first ever red heat warning. Hotter than July was a label on a box of bedding plants I purchased one year, never more appropriate than today! It is of course important to remember other creatures that require habitats cool and damp. Beetles are an essential part of the insect world being beneficial in so many ways to the world in general and specifically our churchyard. To this end it was decided to create a specific habitat for them and a Beetle bucket has been made and sited in the churchyard.

June

The end of June approaches and it is hard to believe, the month has flown by. May was ‘no mow May’ and so this month saw the grass cut back in most of the Churchyard leaving a strip down the RH side of the path where we have been clearing areas and planting. Some of the plants struggled at first in what has been a very dry month but monitoring and watering has seen them through and they have established quite well. A meeting earlier this month on Jubilee weekend with a local historian Paul was most interesting and informative. Areas discussed were the history of the church building itself and interesting gravestones in the Churchyard. Paul has very kindly written a brief history of these and we will be putting together an information sheet on these to be available from the church building and ultimately on line as well. We are extremely grateful for his input on this. I should add that work continues in the lower churchyard which is looking fantastic at the moment to clear away years of accumulated cuttings and rubbish and that is going well.