RESTORATION REVIEW

The hedgehogs are coming to UPC woodland in early April! When light levels are low, or even dark, our hedgehogs will travel up to one mile in search of food; insects, earthworms, slugs and snails. The best way we can protect them is to make our churchyard healthy; chemical free gardens, biodiverse meadows and eco-friendly woodland. Until they can find all our tasty bugs & slugs, we will place special hoglet food in our hedgehog woodland homes. Thus far, we have three families offering to gather in the churchyard on the day of arrival, you can join in too!

The Ulverston Food Waste Project have joined us in contributing their unused fresh produce to the churchyard compost. After mulch consideration, the time came to dig deep, turn things over, restore our compost triple bin and aid the biodiversity of our gardens.  Thank you to the original builders of the triple bins, as well as al  lthose who will continue to lend a hand in making healthy compost!

A UPC warden, garden team, eco-team and monument mapping leaders all met with the council to discuss our wilder side – our naturally biodiverse churchyard – specifically mowing our lawns! The council is very good to not mow bulbs directly after blooming, enabling regeneration for next year’s bloom. Eco-church has requested our Wild Flower Field located on the north side of the church to not be mown until after our seminars. Monument Mapping will continue their project recording and keeping clear our lovely monuments in anticipation of upcoming seminars.

A big thank you goes out to Parkinson, Shepard and Huck households for their creation & donation of 5 Hedgehog Houses! They will rest outside in preparation for our April adoption

(I think the other items mentioned here would be better reported in later updates in March/April)

As the RSPB prepares for the Big Garden Birdwatch this weekend (13-14 Feb) we are urged to fill our bird feeders and have cups of tea on standby! This also signals it is time to hang bird houses in the churchyard woodland!

Folks have made/collected/restored several over these past months. These enabled us to install 6 bird houses on trees in and around the churchyard. We hope they will be chirping with wee winged families soon!

It’s now 2 years since we built the compost and leaf containers in the church garden and we are pleased with our results. We harvested a first ‘crop’ of lush leaf mould to be used as a winter blanket. We gleaned invaluable humus from our compost for garden reconstruction.

To further our composting knowledge, we engaged Ford Park’s expert, Steve Povey, to review our methods in order to reach our intended goal. In an effort to align with the Church of England’s 2030 Carbon Neutral goal, Steve outlined both collective and individualised processes for each group involved in composting; UPC’s office, Altar Flower Guild, Food Waste Project, Garden Team, Eco-church project and church coffee bar. Working together we hope to achieve our goals!

Give us your tired old benches to be restored and live a new life in the churchyard. Or donate a new bench. Both will offer pleasant seating in the Quiet Garden.

We were excited to hear from Steve this week that he has completed 2 bird houses, designed as bijou residences for smaller birds such as blue tits and coal tits. Modestly, he describes them as “not brilliant carpentry” but we are very impressed and think any self-respecting, house hunting bird will be glad to move in next Spring! We’d be thrilled to add to our housing development for the birds and bugs, so if you have made a house or would like plans for a design, please get in touch…..