The Living Churchyard Project is about transforming churchyards and burial grounds into thriving habitats for nature while preserving their role as calm, reflective spaces. By managing these areas with care, the initiative helps protect and restore native plants, birds, insects, and small animals, turning church land into a sanctuary for biodiversity. It is a practical and hopeful way for parishes and communities to care for creation and ensure these cherished places remain alive with both spiritual and natural beauty.
Judith Evans promotes the project within the Diocese and is able to provide sources of reference, guidance and advice, and in some cases, practical help through partner organisations.
“The churchyard is a sermon not only in stones but in plants and animals.”
Wildlife in church and churchyard: Plants, animals and their management. 2nd edition. Cooper, N. (2001) – Church House Publishing
We aim to keep these pages regularly updated with resources, news stories and pictures. Please do get in touch with Judith Evans or Eva Arulmalar if you have any questions or want to update us on your own Living Churchyard.
The DAC have produced a Strategy on Biodiversity
It recognises the contribution that the 400 parish churches and other places of worship, their curtilage land and churchyards make to the provision of varied habitat in both urban and rural settings in all parts of the Diocese.
It is a strategy for informing, advising and supporting parishes in the management, care and development of their church buildings and churchyards to support and enhance biodiversity, alongside the functions of care of the church building as a local centre of mission and worship as well as heritage, and care of the churchyard as a place for burial, commemoration and reflection.
News from Waterford, St Michael and All Angels
Malcolm Wandrag, churchwarden from Waterford, St Michael and All Angels has been in touch to update us on the success of their wildlife management in the churchyard where many new species have been recorded, including the first ever record of the Nigma puella spider in Hertfordshire! You can read more on this story on our website.
Management Plans
View examples of other Churchyard’s management plans here. You can also find leaflets offering advice from Bedfordshire Wildlife Trust and Herts and Middlesex.
Lichen Library
A lichen survey has been made of many churches within the Diocese by expert volunteers with a passion for the subject. You can view the Lichen Library here.
