Love Your Burial Ground Week is running until 11th June, designed to grow our appreciation of churchyards and cemeteries and to encourage the recording of wildlife in these areas.
To celebrate this there was a Churches Count on Nature event at St Mary’s Church, Carisbrooke last Saturday (3rd June). Those attending were able to see what species of insects, flowers and birds were In or around the churchyard.
This churchyard has no designated wild areas, but a number of species were identified in the churchyard, which was formally closed for burials in 1858.
Due to the Council’s ‘No Mow May’ policy there was an abundance of wildflowers, and the grass was much higher than if it had been recently cut enabling seed heads to flourish.
Several people attended the event which was led by Richard Smout.
The old graveyard in Bembridge St Luke’s, looks beautiful now.
The wild flowers are amazing and many butterflies and moths along with all manner of insects abound there.
These places are in many overly manicured town and villages the last bastion of refuge for not only food sources but breeding grounds for our diminishing wildlife.
Thank goodness Bembridge Parish Council have respectful trimmed only what is necessary and left vast swathes to the multitude of wildlife that links complex food chains.
Certainly is nice to see well established wild plants and flowers flourishing there which help attract birds and bats which live in the trees surrounding the old church yard..
Such a contrast to the No Mow May, verges in Bembridge, which of course are mostly just tall unsightly grass (along with crisp packets, dog doings bags and tins) which the main council have left for ‘nature’
Bio-diversity and maintenance is a tricky beast to keep visually pleasing and yet good for our wild plants and creatures. Bembridge town council have achieved this admirably this year well done all.
Grasses play an important role and shouldn’t be mentioned alongside crisp packets. They enable a whole host of important tiny insects to exist especially egg laying and larvae hosts. Some insects only lay on certain grasses. This is obviously important to birds. Its this ignorance that ruins biodiversity and wrecks the food chain.