St Cynbryd’s Community Gardens
St Cynbryd’s Community Group
The St Cynbryd’s Community Gardens in Llanddulas demonstrates how the local community have worked together to revive a churchyard that had become overgrown, unsightly and largely unusable.
The project started when the Parochial Church Council made the decision to clear the churchyard and they were advised to contact a group in nearby Old Colwyn who had completed a similar scheme. Chris Prout had been involved with the project in Old Colwyn and he decided to get involved with the project in Llanddulas. “It was an appalling situation,” he describes. “The churchyard was horribly overgrown. There were lots of old trees which had seeded themselves. Parts of the churchyard were simply inaccessible, so that if people wanted to visit the graves, it couldn’t be done.”
The decision was made to restore the churchyard and keep the graves in place, with certain parts of the site to be landscaped and turned into areas of special interest.
Following a public meeting, a number of volunteers started the work. All the heavy overgrowth and self-seeded trees were cleared and hidden gravestones were exposed. Local resident Anne Bowyer, was delighted to get involved, “I love gardening, I like to get involved in the community and it was a wonderful challenge. The church is now open every Saturday afternoon, so the volunteers can meet and chat.”
A wealth of support
The project also drew support from outside bodies: the local private school has community days where pupils spent time working on the site and similarly the Women’s Institute and the local Brownies also got involved.
Money also had to be raised for more specialist work like constructing paths and clearing trees. The Welsh Assembly contributed £38,000 from its Landfill Tax Credits Scheme and the local community and government groups raised a further £40,000. The project has now won the support of Conwy County Borough Council, which has started to give practical and financial help.
As a result, the churchyard has been transformed. A number of different gardens have been created including a butterfly garden, a rose garden and a sensory garden. Special wildlife habitats have been created and bird and bat boxes have been installed. A wooden Celtic Cross has been designed by a local artist and a raised bed of healing plants is looked after by the local Brownies. The project has also been able to replace the original churchyard railings, which were removed in World War Two and melted for munitions production.
People are now coming to the churchyard to find the tombs of their ancestors and to do genealogical research. The church has become more popular as a venue for weddings and the project has regenerated the whole village.
For the second year running, the Community Gardens has been awarded the Green Pennant Award – an award for local and community groups that manage green sites. There are further plans in place for additional improvements to the churchyard and Prout believes that the Green Pennant Award will make it easier to get funding in the future. “It shows that our work is getting recognised,” he says.