“Be Creative to Save Creation”
Our friends at Toll Gavel United Church in Beverley will be participating in the annual Heritage Open Days which are organised as a festival of history and culture. On Saturday 7 September they are holding an Eco Fair which will take place in the church and in the church drive as their focus for this year. They took part in the planning and delivery of a similar event held at Beverley Minster in 2023. We have continued with this partnership and they are keen to contribute to raising awareness of current environmental issues and how we can contribute to alleviating some of them.
They have chosen the theme ‘Be Creative to Save Creation’ and have invited several groups to showcase their skills and contribution to supporting the precarious planet we all share. Groups include: the Beverley Repair Café, Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, Beverley Men in Sheds, Frith Farm, Beverley Fairtrade Group and the East Riding Countryside Access Team. They have planned some activities to join in. One will be to design and make a poster which highlights a climate related or environmental issue. There will be an opportunity to make elephants from plastic milk bottles with one of their children’s workers, hoping this will help to highlight the danger much of our wildlife is facing because of loss of habitat, climate change and poaching. Several people will be demonstrating practical eco ideas from the past, showing how people made their own household items or repaired them. ’Make Do and Mend.’ rather than “throw away and buy new” The event will be open from 10.00 – 16.00 and entry is free.
Refreshments will be available throughout the day. We encourage you to go and support Toll Gavel church in this event and support the groups who will be present and perhaps think more carefully about how small changes to our lifestyle can help to save the planet. The church will also be open the following mornings, Monday 9 September, Tuesday 10 and Thursday 12 for anyone to go and look round and have a cup of tea or coffee.
Beverley Minster’s Secret Garden receives the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust’s Wildlife Gardening Award 2024
On Sunday 9 June Judy Smith together with Jude Coates and Marilyn Mooney (pictured above) were presented with a Yorkshire Wildlife Trust Wildlife Gardening Award for 2024 at the 11.00 service. Judy says “We all feel quite blessed to work in the garden, we enjoy having visitors which makes all the hard work worthwhile. The award is a bonus.”
The Secret Garden has been managed by Judy and her team for a number of years with a regard to enhancing wildlife habitats.
The Eco Church group applied for the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust’s annual wildlife gardening award which we have just been awarded. This involves having at least 10 wildlife enhancing features with 2 from each of 5 categories in the garden . The categories being food, shelter, water, management and connectivity, examples in each category include:
- Food. We have bird feeders, native fruit trees, herbs, flowering plants for insects throughout the year
- Shelter. Dead wood/log piles, stone pile, bird boxes, hedgehog house, homes for solitary bees, hedgerow
- Water. Bird bath, waterbutts
- Management. No pesticides/herbicides or slug pellets, compost bins, recycle materials eg plant pot out of old wellington boot
- Connectivity. Mixed hedgerow on boundary, hedgehog highway ,helping others grow wilder by having the garden open to other groups.
Here we will promote Wildlife Gardening, with ideas to encourage us all to make our own gardens wilder and to perhaps apply for your own wildlife gardening award!
Go Wild for Wildlife in your garden this summer
In the light of the Secret Garden’s success in gaining this award and, as part of the Minster’s aspiration to attain the A Rocha Eco Church silver award we are encouraging the congregation to consider gardening for wildlife.
Click on the link to find out how to claim your Yorkshire Wildlife Trust Wildlife Gardening Award or consider one action for wildlife.
Wildlife Gardening Award >.
Beverley Minster received the A ROCHA Bronze award in 2022 and is now working to gain the Silver award.
Here are their Eco tips for 2024.
A Rocha UK’s Easy Eco Tips 2024 Calendar
SEPTEMBER
Step outside this Season of Creation (1 September – 4 October). Connect with nature and dedicate this time to God as the Creator and sustainer of all life. Choose an idea or two from our resource and encourage your church family to take part too!
“The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it.”
Psalm 42, v.1
Beverley Minster’s Eco Creed
- We believe that God made the world and “it was good”.
- We share in his creativity as caretakers of his beautiful creation on behalf of the generations to come.
- We acknowledge, though, that through negligence and greed we have damaged and destroyed much of the planet.
- We believe that climate change is happening now and that it impacts in particular the poorest and most vulnerable who contribute least to global emissions.
- We believe that we need to repent, to change the way we live and rediscover our calling to care for the whole of creation.
- We are committed to help the Church of England to achieve its declared aim of being carbon neutral by 2030 and to increase our awareness and appreciation of the environment.
To guide us we are using an environmental audit looking at 5 areas of church life prepared by the Christian charity A Rocha UK that offers bronze, silver and gold awards.
Open each section below to find out about our Eco creed
Beverley Minster and the Clergy are committed to incorporating care for God’s creation into worship and teaching. The church has several services a year focusing on creation, God’s bounteous provision for us, and our responsibility for caring for God’s world. The Crossing service worships outside in the Secret Garden (weather permitting). The Quiet Garden is set aside for private prayer and contemplation as well as being used on occasion for home groups to meet.
Beverley Minster is responsible for several areas of land which we are looking to use to maximise biodiversity and appreciation and engagement with God’s creation.
The church yard is open each day during daylight hours when the Minster is open. It is now closed for burials and is maintained by the East Riding council. This area has snowdrops, aconites, daffodils and buddleia in season. Through National Heritage Lottery Funding the Sanctuary Project has created a wild flower area with planters for herbs and seating to enable enjoyment of the space. This area is accessible from the church yard entrance and from the Minster itself when weather permits.
The Secret Garden, the Quiet Garden and a strip of land adjacent to the parish hall are all managed by volunteers. The Secret Garden is part of the Vicarage but is available for church use. This area has a wildlife pond, hedgehog house, log piles for mini-beasts and bird feeders as well as fruit trees, flower borders, vegetable patch and a compost heap. Flowers from the garden are used in the church.The Crossing Service takes place here on Sundays weather permitting. Frogs, hedgehogs, numerous birds and the occasional fox frequent the Secret Garden.
The Quiet garden, next to the parish centre, is used for private prayer and contemplation and house groups from time to time. The Quiet Garden is part of The Quiet Garden Movement.
Beverley Minster congregation wish to become more environmentally friendly. To help and encourage this on an individual level we are promoting lifestyle ways to do this. We are promoting the Climate Heroes survey which determines an individual’s carbon footprint and advice on how to reduce the footprint where possible. We recognise change is difficult, but we believe each small step can make a big difference when we add our individual steps together, whether it be a reduction in car use, heating, plastic use, litter picking or creating space for nature.
The Church of England has declared a climate emergency and aims to be zero carbon by 2030. We are committed to help with achieving this. Our buildings include the Minster, Parish Hall, Peter Harrison Room and the Parish Centre. We are formulating a delivery plan to achieve carbon zero. We realise that this will need community engagement and financial investment requiring funds to be raised. The Church does an annual energy return to determine our energy footprint which is rated A++ to G. Our footprint will help us to formulate the delivery plan. We are currently looking at all our energy consuming systems with a view to reducing our fossil energy consumption and to bring them all within an affordable envelope.
Being an Eco church is more than looking after the Minster buildings and land in an environmentally friendly way although this is a key component. It involves every area of our church lives, including how we engage with our local community and the wilder world. Our actions speak louder than words in caring for God’s creation. To facilitate this we are working through Beverley Churches Together to encourage collective working on issues of climate change and other environmental issues. We have met with East Riding Council and are fostering links with them for the benefit of the environment. We have arranged a joint meeting in September to learn about the council’s eco initiatives. We are also contacting non-church groups to encourage a positive impact on the environment. We are also trying to learn from our Christian partners around the world about the impact of climate change and other environmental issues affecting them.
We are also reviewing the cleaning products and other items used in the Minster for their Eco credentials and where possible attempting swaps to more eco-friendly alternatives.