Eco Church Annual Report for 2023 APCM

St Luke’s Eco Church team (Jan Rich, Sue Dimond, Polly and Ian McKay) has now been supplemented by Ann Hatton.

Our main activities in 2022/2023 have been:

• We made our first formal application for Eco Church status, and were awarded a Bronze award by A Rocha UK, who run the scheme.

• We led a Creation Sunday service in September with the help of the youth and the Open the Book team. The focus was “listening to creation”.

• We have enhanced the church grounds for wildlife in a number of ways, including planting hundreds of bulbs and installing nesting boxes for birds. We hope that the crab apple and blackthorn whips that we planted will survive and thrive to become our contribution to the Queen’s Green Canopy.

• Very much a team effort, we built a keyhole garden next to the Centre, which is similar in design to those which Send a Cow (now Ripple effect) use in their projects in Africa, and demonstrates low-input farming with its central composting chamber. Many thanks to Tim Packer for supplying the materials, and to everyone who has donated plants.

• We have continued to communicate through the Monthly Newsletter, the Eco Church Blog, and the Herald. We are part of CAFÉ (Christian Action for the Environment) BaNES to learn and give encouragement across the local area.

We are very grateful to all who have helped with these, and to those who are working on other projects which are part of our Eco Church journey, such as the flower team and the changes they have made to make our church decorations eco-friendly.

By the next APCM we hope to be in a position to apply for a Silver Eco Church award. We hope that this will include:

• An audit of what plants we have in the grounds, kindly helped by Dave Green.

• Another Creation Sunday service – hopefully this will be developed as a collaborative effort with other local churches through CAFÉ BaNES.

• Further ecological development in the grounds, e.g. a bug hotel.

• Working with the PCC, and BaNES Council, to develop a plan for the eventual removal of the pollarded limes and replacement with more appropriate, and wildlife-friendly, native hedging (hawthorn, blackthorn and dog rose).

We remain available to support the PCC in any future decisions that they need to make which have climate or environmental implications (e.g. grounds maintenance, energy / heating, water butts).