Beautiful Burial Grounds - from Caring for God's Acre - three things to round up March

Beautiful Burial Grounds
three things to round up March

Thank you for opening our end of March newsletter 
containing three things we hope will be of interest.

Love Your Burial Ground Week with Churches Count on Nature registration is open
 

Registrations are open to take part in Love Your Burial Ground Week with Churches Count on Nature. This is our annual initiative in partnership with the Church of England, the Church in Wales and A Rocha UK to celebrate and monitor the wildlife to be found in churchyards, chapel yards and cemeteries across the UK.

Resources on our website include helpful advice on recording wildlife, as well as links to a series of Spotters Guides and a comprehensive set of Frequently Asked Questions.

The photograph below shows participants from 2025 in the lovely church of St Laurence in Leaveland, Kent. Every year burial grounds from all over the country run nature spotting events, ranging from tiny rural churches and chapels to large urban cemeteries and everything in between.

Quotes from participants in 2025 in response to the question “What was the highlight of the event?” included:

Enthusiasm and working together, sharing results and pictures

Finding scabious had come up in the meadow area we are now managing for wildlife, and a rose-gall wasp

Seeing the participants' excited reaction to the sheer number of different plants growing in the graveyard

plus one of our all-time favourites:

Finding hedgehog poo in our city centre church yard

We're focusing on swifts in 2026

A report commissioned by the British Trust for Ornithology in 2023 indicted that from 1995 there had been a 68% reduction in the UK breeding swift population. 

Swift bricks in new houses and swift boxes on existing properties have been promoted by swift conservation groups around the country, but some of the most successful projects have involved the installation of groups of swift boxes behind the louvres in church and cathedral towers. In 2020 twenty boxes were installed in Winchester Cathedral and by the end of 2025 there were nests in nineteen of them, and evidence in seventeen that young birds had fledged. 

As part of Love your Burial Ground Week with Churches Count on Nature we are asking people to focus on swifts alongside their other nature spotting, and the first 500 to register can  request to receive a booklet produced by Action for Swifts I am a Swift - I am in Trouble.

It is very difficult to spot swift nests so people are urged to check for other signs, particularly at the beginning or end of the day. You are very unlikely to catch the moment to photograph a swift as they dart about, but if a group is circling around at about the height of a building they are probably nesting nearby. An audio recording of their characteristic screaming cry can be uploaded to iNaturalist, or your sighting can be added to the Swiftmapper website or app, where you can also find out about other swift sightings nearby.

​​We love schools and other groups of young people joining in

During Love your Burial Ground Week with Churches Count on Nature we look forward to welcoming schools and other groups of young people such as Cubs and Brownies to take part.

We have a range of resources that suggest activities to engage children in churchyards as a place of discovery, exploring the wildlife and history woven deeply around their stones. These include a Burial Ground Discovery Pack outlining activities and hints on what to look out for across the seasons and a comprehensive Education Pack. 

As well as free copies of our Starter Guide and FSC guide to wildlife of burial grounds, groups can request up to a maximum of 10 copies of the Action for Swifts I am a Swift - I am in Trouble booklet plus some I'm Counting on Nature stickers.