Where we started
St Michael’s churchyard, West Hill, is blessed with being a nature-rich area, surrounded by trees and native hedges. To encourage wildflowers, ‘no-mow May’ has been practised for a number of years in upper areas of the churchyard. Deer and rabbits are regular visitors to the churchyard.
With encouragement and support from OVMC Eco Church team, we joined the A Rocha scheme and gained our Bronze Award in February 2023. In working towards a Silver Award, we looked at the potential of the churchyard as a space to support more wildlife. We also hope that eventually the West Hill community will see it as an area to appreciate and find peace in beautiful surroundings.
It started with Messy Church
We soon realised that the obvious way to transform the churchyard into a habitat for wildlife was to ask our children in Messy Church! We found that the children’s knowledge and appreciation of global warming, recycling and caring for our world is immense. Through the Messy Church Goes Wild scheme, the process began.
Home building
A member of the congregation kindly built a frame out of recycled wood to make a ‘Bug Hotel’. Messy Church children filled the frame with bricks, straw and other materials. The ‘hotel’ was placed by the hedge halfway down the churchyard. It has established well into its environment.
We have also started two log piles along the hedge line in the churchyard, which should attract a greater diversity of minibeasts.
The next step was a Messy Church meeting in which the children made bird, bat and butterfly boxes. The first year, we were delighted when a family of blue tits took up residence.
We’re not certain if the bat and butterfly boxes are being used (we hope so!) but, when we hosted a community Bat Evening in 2024, bats were detected. Following on from this event, we invited representatives from the Bat Conservation Trust, who were able to detect a variety of species in the area.
An increase in the number of butterflies has also been noticed, which is encouraging. Further areas of the churchyard have been left ‘wild’, which has allowed more wildflowers to establish.
Wildlife pond
Following an OVMC Eco Church meeting in which we discussed the benefit of creating a pond, we decided that was another project! A local farmer and St Michael’s parishioner kindly donated and delivered an old tractor tyre. This was covered with a pond liner and filled with water.
We’ve put a couple of oxygenating plants into the water together with ‘log slopes’ as access for any potential frog and newt residents. A solar fountain has been placed on the surface to further aerate the water. The next step is to plant some ground cover plants around the pond to cover the pond liner. It’s early days but we’re hoping some insects and amphibians will show an interest in the pond.
Trees
Our trees are an important part of the churchyard. The majority have been growing there for years.
We approached West Hill Arboretum Group for advice on how we should maintain the older trees whilst introducing more species. As a result, in November 2024, we planted four native blossom trees, which complete the avenue alongside the path. The trees were sponsored by residents in memory of loved ones or to celebrate their families. They were planted during a blessing service led by Rev. Mac Dick.
A couple of diseased box shrubs were removed this year but we chose to leave the stumps to attract more insects, who in turn have attracted a family of green woodpeckers!
Plans for the future
In Spring 2024, we were lucky enough to have a survey of our churchyard by Kelvin Boot, a local naturalist and science writer, who assists the Exeter Diocese Environmental Advisor. He returned after a couple of weeks and made a list of the species of birds, insects and plants currently in the churchyard. Kelvin made many suggestions how we might improve the wonderful space we already have. From this we have developed a five-year plan.