The Friends will be taking part in Heritage Open in September this year so keep the week 11-17th free.
We will be hosting Caring for God’s Acre and their Stories from the Stones on the 13th and then a Lichen specialist will be leading a walk on the 15th. Watch this site for additional events and booking instructions nearer the time.
The Cleaner Greener campaign week is a little while off, but in Brandwood End we started today at our scheduled quarterly litter pick. It was great to see so many familiar faces but we did welcome a few new ones today who swelled our numbers to 20 including 4 little people ! There were 23 bags collected, and yet again a lot of the litter was flower paper. This March Litter pick is always our last chance to seek out wind blown litter under shrubbery and tangled in brambles. Once everything starts to grow it is all lost till next winter. Thank you to everyone that came along. The Friends really appreciate your support.
Happy smiling faces! That’s what the outdoors does for your mental health.
This month is really the last chance we have to remove self set trees and shrubbery overwhelming some graves in areas of the cemetery as soon it will be nesting time and this activity will stop.
Please support this event on the 18th, that is being led jointly by the committee of the Friends and Bereavement Services Activities Manager, Josie Wall. We will have some tools and some gloves but if you would prefer to bring your own, that would also help. We need shears, loppers, rakes and secateurs.
We will be there from 11am till 2pm so drop in for any length of time during those hours.
Winter is a quiet time in Brandwood End but the Friends have been working away in the background on a number of projects.
We are creating a number of ‘Trail sheets’ that will cover Heritage items, trees, interesting graves, fascinating memorials, quiet corners to rest and take in the wildlife and trees plus measured routes to stroll, with distances and surface types to encourage the less able to enjoy them as well.
The sheet below, kindly produced by committee member Lisa Fair, highlights some of the cemetery heritage- both historical and ecological.
This week we had to make an appeal on Social Media site ‘facebook’ for volunteers to remove some of the many geraniums that the Friends planted in the Civilian Garden of Remembrance. No sooner said than done as two of our supporters stepped up to the plate and the job was done.(In freezing conditions)
We had hoped to try and keep the Geraniums over winter as the garden area is pretty sheltered- but we hadn’t banked on the -10 temperatures just before Christmas. All that was left of the glorious Geraniums was brown mush and not an attractive sight!
Thank you Vanessa and Tricia.
Come along to our last Winter shrubbery removal session and help clear Holly and Ivy from the cemetery, so we can uncover graves that have been shrouded with greenery. This will be the last opportunity before nesting starts and all clearing stops. This is a joint event with The Friends and Bereavement Services.
Once again we are indebted to the BCC Grounds Maintenance team who have undertaken a major reduction in the height and bulk of our hedge surrounding the Civilian Garden of Remembrance. Not only do we not have the equipment or man power to carry out this task, we don’t have the ability to remove the resulting shrubbery. It was important that this cut back was completed well before birds started nesting, so thank you again Paul’s team !
One day is beautiful and the next is really dismal ! This is a British Winter and we all long for signs of Spring. This week in the cemetery we have had a couple of hints that Spring is on the way.
The Woodpeckers in the cemetery have started hammering out ownership of certain areas ready for the mating season. In Brandwood End we are blessed with both Spotted and Green (ground loving) Woodpeckers.
If you keep your eyes peeled you will also spot some of the hardy Snowdrops the Friends planted !
We were heartened to be joined by 13 supporters of FBEC in our final litter pick of 2022, especially when it would have been inviting to have stayed in the warm and dry! December days seem to be bright and sunny or dull and dank- today was the latter.
The total collection of 18 bags, again mainly windblown flower paper, took some finding under hedges and behind gravestones. It was noticeable today that there were many artificial flowers blown around the cemetery or redeployed and nibbled/pecked by squirrels and crows. Please do check your family graves, as we try to pop the newer flowers back on graves but have no idea where they have blown from so it could be that we have placed them on other graves nearby. Apologies, but they really do need to be secured against wind, Squirrel and Muntjac attack !
Thanks again to our volunteers.