Over half term St Mary’s, Overton held a churchyard day, inviting their community to connect with the church, learn about local nature and join them in surveying the wildlife that call their churchyard home.
The Eco Church group has been keen to involve the wider church and community in caring for creation. They also wanted to follow up on a previous church yard survey carried out a few years ago, to understand the grasses, wildflowers and other plants in their burial ground. To help do this they set out small square plots across the site and recorded the different varieties of plants in each quadrant – plant identifier apps were very handy!
St Mary’s also hosted a variety of activities for families to get involved with as well as the surveying. This included creating bird feeder balls to hang up at home, creating clay pets and a drawing competition.
This surveying work enables the community to nurture and care for their site effectively in the future. For example, they will continue action to preserve and grow the glow worm population. It will also support their work to draw up a churchyard management plan. The Eco Church group hope to hold several days like this throughout the year to help them monitor the changes throughout the year.
The day featured a workshop from the local Men’s Shed group on making hedgehog houses. The group brought along two which were placed around the churchyard. They also hosted a presentation on the glow worms which used to be found all over the churchyard but are now in decline.
Surveys like this are a great way to care for creation and to help achieve an Eco Church award. For more information about creating a churchyard survey, go to the Eco Church Land resource page or the Caring for God’s Acre website . If you’re thinking about surveying your land, why not join in Church Count on Nature (7th-15th June), for more information click here.
