Country diary: Putting a garden at the heart of the church

‘The garden was created last year by parishioners, both as a place of reflection and to help local biodiversity.’ Photograph: Mary Montague

“Where shall we place our hope?” These words pop into my head as I watch a bumblebee dawdling around the pollinator garden of Magheralin parish church. The garden was created last year by parishioners, both as a place of reflection and to help local biodiversity. It’s already flourishing. Around the central arrangement of holly planted into the shape of a trinity circle, there are spikes of dogwood, scrawny willows dabbed with pinkish-grey catkins, and beds of daffodils. A robin warbles softly through the choral strains drifting from the imposing 19th-century church. Nesting rooks guffaw from the churchyard’s massive horse chestnuts. A coal tit wheezes.

Across the road is Magheralin’s old church, an ivy-softened ruin guarded by mossy headstones. Dating from the 14th century, this provides a sanctuary for wildlife found in old graveyards. In a few days, Easter will be celebrated there under a roof of open sky. That annual service seems to reach across to the pollinator garden, connecting the congregation’s heritage and future.

‘Across the road is Magheralin’s old church, an ivy-softened ruin guarded by mossy headstones.’ Photograph: Mary Montague

The garden is not the only fruit of parishioners’ endeavours. They’ve hosted community “bioblitz” and dawn chorus events and, in the scrubby field behind me, they have planted native saplings to modestly reforest a “waste ground”. It’s an inspiring story of acting locally, but there’s global thinking behind it. The Magheralin parishioner Stephen Trew spearheaded the Church of Ireland’s (Anglican Communion) divestment from fossil fuels as part of the growing “caring for creation” movement within the Christian churches. Christianity claims over 30% of the world’s population; its collective voice could be a powerful impetus towards the transformational changes needed to address the ecological crisis. And as Magheralin has shown, environmentalism can be a direct expression of pastoral care.

Hope, and where to place it, is still niggling me. I pull out my phone to check the phrase’s source. It’s from an artwork by William Kentridge. His words remind me of the last report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which suggests that we still have a narrow chance of averting irretrievable ecological catastrophe. Will a few saplings make any difference? Faith takes many forms.

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