In the newest extension to the churchyard (Section Q, a little way down
Moverons Lane) we did establish a garden of remembrance here but
lost all our planting. I believed at the time our new planting had been
stolen; I’m sorry to say that we do have things stolen from the churchyard.

However, it may be that, on this occasion, deer were responsible; we are
currently trying to re-establish this with a view to open it as part of “God’s
Garden” (the whole churchyard) during the Open Gardens’ Weekend.
The Holy Mowers continue their fabulous work to maintain the churchyard.

When I made my final report as a churchwarden in 2014, I said that we
had to be realistic and recognise that we are getting older and it would be
wonderful to attract people a bit younger. We do have some, not many,
and more would be very welcome.

Annoyingly, we continue to get older. It would still be nice to have more
young people volunteer; however, most of us are in our “golden years” –
so, whatever age you are, you will be very welcome to join us on either a
regular or occasional basis.

Strong winds during the year have caused a lot of damage to trees and we
are mindful of the risk to visitors from falling branches. We have done a lot
of work to trim those that are most obviously at risk. We realised that we
had 3 very mature “Trees of Heaven” which were responsible for hundreds
of suckers and seedlings. We had to employ Mark Wilby to fell them and
cut them up. He did a fabulous job in very difficult circumstances.

The motivation for starting the Holy Mowers in 2014 was that the cost of
maintaining the churchyard with either paid staff or contractors was totally
beyond the resources of the church; I’m afraid that it looked neglected,
overgrown and, frankly, a mess. It was obvious that if anything could be
done to make it safe and accessible to people, it would have to be taken
on by volunteers.

So… The Holy Mowers! It does look altogether better but – more
importantly – anybody can now safely gain access to anywhere in the
churchyard and, because it is free of the stranglehold of waist-high grass,
there has been an explosion in growth of snowdrops, daffodils, primroses,
bluebells and even lupins! (how did they find their way in?)

Our churchyard is huge; there is a huge amount of work to be done but we
do it, we love doing it and are proud of the difference we have made.

Bob Goodenough