Churchyard Maintenance

Churchyard Maintenance Update 18/11/2025 - Well as some of the best cartoons said "That's all folks!!!". We made our last efforts for 2025 today: the strimmer decided it was too frosty and the little lawnmower threw up some oily gunk as if to tell us to give up!

We've strimmed down the wildflower patch that we seeded at our Songs of Praise as the chickweed was growing out of control and as we know weeds will soon choke the good seed! (If only the sower in the parable had been more careful!). So hopefully strimming that down so late in the year will help the seeds next spring.

Just got the edges of grass along the main path cut and swept up some leaves from the path and put everything away.

Over the 28 weeks of maintenance, we have accrued some 235 man hours between us. That’s an average of 8 hours per week between them. Imagine if we had had more volunteers!!

And now I've emailed our suppliers/maintenance to get the mowers serviced and repaired over winter (both are under a standard warranty so praying that is good enough). So now on to our Christmas Tree at the Christmas Tree Festival - The Holly and the Ivy, of course! (Got to plug the value of ivy (and holly) to wildlife).

Mark and John

Information:

We were a very small informal team of helpers who did our best to maintain the churchyard, and really will need more volunteers in 2026.  Because some of us work, and some of us are retired, we don't, at present, have any formal time of meeting.  We just put ourselves to work when we can find the time, whether that's during the week or at weekends.

We are managing (not leaving!, there's a correction here) some areas of the churchyard 'wild' for nature.  In the most this is on the edges and around older, untended graves. But if you do tend a grave and it's 'in the wilderness' and you rather it wasn't then do let us know.

We have a fairly extensive set of tools at our disposal, with 3 petrol mowers, a couple of strimmers (little and large) and a good selection of hand tools.

If you would like to help us then please do contact Mark (About Us) and we can arrange a time convenient to you to meet up and 'do some work' for however long you've got!

If you do tend any grave or cremation memorial stone then please do remove any old flowers/plants etc as the season progresses.  Likewise if you are leaving cut flowers then do not leave them in plastic wrapping.  We are trying to do our part for the enviroment and plastic waste is high in the media interest at the moment! The green bin in the car park area is for general church/churchyard waste (despite it's colour).

Many thanks for reading.

Mark and the churchyard maintenance team.

Updated: 20251119