Can a place for the dead promote life? Nature Reserve Graveyards
Natural and woodland burial grounds are gaining popularity in the UK. Green burials are increasing as we recognise the impact on the environment from standard burials and cremation. Woodland and meadow areas are being created as places to be buried as well as being new wildlife habitats and nature reserves. If we turn this idea on it’s head why not adapt our existing burial grounds to become a sanctuary for our native species? Our churchyards comprise a wide range of habitats including gravestones, walls, woodland, grassland and scrub. These support a variety of species including lichen and protected slow worms and bats.
St Oswald’s church in the centre of Durham City is ecologically managed as a wildlife haven with a wild flower meadow and mature woodland.
Funeral Magazine spoke to Clare Stancliffe, who wrote the initial report to her local council to request less frequent mowing at St Oswalds and for an area to be set aside as a wildflower meadow. Clare was inspired by Francesca Greenoak’s 1985 book God’s Acre: The Flowers and Animals of the Parish Churchyard and spurred on to take action in 1990 after the council introduced large ride-on mowers, resulting in damage to gravestones and bare patches left in the grass.
“ Around this time there was a lot of interest, nationally, in the idea of managing churchyards in a traditional way, rather than ‘manicuring’ them. Here in County Durham, Janetta Scurfield, who was active in the Durham Wildlife Trust, was interested in the wildlife potential of churchyards, and she was instrumental in getting a churchyards’ group set up under the aegis of the Wildlife Trust. This drew together people from various churches in the area together with experts from the Wildlife Trust.”
The Trust organized training days and offered churches advice on how to manage their churchyards sympathetically for wildlife. Graveyards offer a unique habitat for many species of flora and fauna. They are usually undisturbed, quiet places, often with ancient trees, particularly the yew whose berries are a food source for a variety of birds and mammals. If native wildflowers are allowed to grow, bees and other pollinating insects will come, providing food for birds and small mammals.
“What is important is that one isn’t neglecting a churchyard – one is simply managing it differently.”
So why is this ecological method of management the exception rather than the norm? Opponents often claim that in unmown areas access to individual graves is a problem but a few simple mown paths can easily overcome this. It is inevitable that some taxpaying parishioners will see these sort of changes as the council taking an easier and cheaper management option. A churchyard is after all a place where we bury and visit our loved ones. Some will see unmown grass and wildflowers and think that it’s untidy and full of weeds. This is why involvement and interaction with the community is so important. If local people are involved in the project they will understand it and be more welcoming of changes.
Joanne Marwood of the Northumberland Wildlife Trust agrees, “It is essential that people involved and people visiting the site can understand your intentions, be sensitive to concerns and explain that helping wildlife does not mean ‘wilderness’.” Local people and schools can get involved by carrying out surveys of the area and documenting the species found. Dorset Wildlife Trust have a very successful ‘Living Churchyards’ scheme with over 100 parishes involved.
In 2011 in Rosedale, part of the North York Moors, local volunteers and National Park Conservation Volunteers worked together to create a mini meadow in the St Mary & St Laurence churchyard. By collecting seed from nearby wild meadows they were able to plant a wide variety of grasses and flowering plants to attract bees and butterflies. The meadow is an ideal habitat for many pollinating insects and already there are small mammals and slow worms making their home there. Pupils from a local secondary school are involved in the management of the meadow and conduct surveys to record the species present. Conservation is at the heart of the project and the inclusion of local school children may well produce the next generation of guardians of our churchyards as a haven for native wildlife.
