We also held our first wildlife survey during the Open Gardens – as well as some interesting sightings by some of our younger visitors, we were fortunate enough to have Gareth Matthes visit on the day. Gareth is a professional ecologist and compiled a comprehensive list of all of his sightings.

• Flowers: bush vetch, ox-eye daisies, common spotted orchids, knapweed, common sorrel, meadow buttercups, marsh thistle, white and red clover, sweet vernal and Yorkshire fog grass
• Grasses: cock’s foot grass, false-oat grass, field woodrush, timothy grass, red fescue, perennial rye grass, bents and meadow grasses.
• In the surrounding woods there are oak, ash, blackthorn, hazel, elder, hawthorn willow and ferns.

We were delighted to see such an extensive list of plants, trees and grasses as well as ‘evidence’ of dormice living nearby! We are thrilled that a previous decision to ‘selectively mow’ the churchyard has proven to be so successful in encouraging bio-diversity in the grounds.