The rector and a group of members from St. Cystennin's church used a checklist from Ecocongregation to evaluate how 'green' our church is. It covers areas such as worship, church buildings, church land, community involvement. One of the areas we chose for action is Caring for the Churchyard: demonstrating our care for God's creation in a practical way, conserving habitats, encouraging wildlife. 

 overgrown areas - butterburr and bramble summer 2008

We have an ideas board in church, are consulting and forming links with appropriate organisations and people and will be forming a long term action plan for looking after the churchyard. 

This site will be updated regularly or come and visit our churchyard if you are passing! We are on cycle and footpath routes! 

Update 7th October 2008

Community services (Probation) have commenced clearing the overgrown part of the churchyard and are doing a great job!

We are applying for grants to hopefully fund some volunteer days in the spring led by British Trust for Conservation Volunteers.

The ideas board has lots of suggestions that will help us from a long term plan.

Update 10th December 2008

Community services have done a fantastic  job of clearing overgrown areas - particularly bramble covering some graves that had not seen the light of day for years! The North Wales Birding Forum have now set up bird feeding in the churchyard and we are encouraging church members (and anyone else!) to donate bird food - link to their website - www.northwalesbirding.co.uk 

We decorated a Christmas tree with the theme "Looking after God's Creation - Feed the Birds" for  St. Michael's Christmas tree festival and the tree is in the churchyard now for the duration of December. Come and spend some time watching the bluetits and great tits and see if you can hear the woodpecker!  

We continue with grant applications and hope to have volunteer days in the spring. We have applied to join British Trust for Conservation volunteers as a group - one of the church members has kindly funded the joining fee.    

Update March 2009  

The churchyard is full of spring flowers - primroses, daffodils, celandines, violets...and is a peaceful spot on a sunny spring day. Visitors to the council cemetry adjacent to the churchyard will benefit now from the tarmac path recently laid.  Please note - St. Cystennin's churchyard is not council maintained like the adjcent cemetry and is the responsibility of the church members, who work on the churchyard voluntarily.

2009 Spring Flowers

The bird feeding is going well and members of the church as well as North wales Birding Forum are donating bird food with feeder topped up several times a week.   

The 3 old yew trees were registered last year with the Woodland Trust Ancient Tree Hunt (see photos on website) - we think they are about 600 years old and perhaps date back to the time of the medieval church. A verifier is due to visit this month to measure them.  

Unfortunately we were unsuccessful with a recent grant application and  have not yet secured funding to take the churchyard project to the next level, but have further grant applications in mind to apply for.   

Easter Cross with flowers from the churchyard 

   Come and experience the peace of this churchyard...       

Update November 2009

The church congregation continue to bring donations of food to feed the birds - bluetits, great tits, sparrows, blackbirds, robin, and woodpecker. We will be putting nesting boxes up shortly.  The side part of the churchyard has been cared for by spring meadow strimming regime this year and we will hopefully be rewarded with a magnificent display of spring flowers again.  Other parts of the churchyard were overtaken by butterburr again (we were unable to kill it as advised, as the sheep from the adjacent farmer's field kept coming into the churchyard to graze via a collapsed boundary wall).

Weather has been too wet at weekends recently to make any progress with these overgrown areas to date, along with one the issue that one of the two main volunteers is recovering from some hand surgery.  

We look forward to spring!    

fungus growing on one of the yew trees 

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one of the three yew trees in the churchyard (registered with Woodland Trust, Ancient Tree Hunt)

Update February/March 2010

The RSPB garden watch on a very cold day at the end of January showed that the bird most numerous at any one time in the hour spent in the churchyard was the great tit. A variety of birds continue to visit the birdfeeding stations - bluetits, four robins, chaffinches, long tailed tits recently and a pheasant and a great spotted woodpecker were seen last week.

Thanks to church members for providing the bird food. The birds have been very greedy over this cold winter! 

There is a lovely display of snowdrops in the churchyard, with spring flowers such as primroses and daffodils late in showing due to the cold weather.   

Work on the churchyard has now started again and we are making contact with some more organisations for advice and hoping that the community payback scheme will consider our request for some further help .