St Luke’s Church Great Crosby
Grounds Project

“to create a place of beauty and a haven for people and wildlife”

3 Developing Partnerships

One of the exciting things in our church grounds project so far has been the partnerships we have developed. We have worked with both St Luke’s Junior and Crosby High Schools and with Mencap. St Luke’s year 6 pupils planted shrubs in January 2007, and Crosby High pupils took part in a planting scheme along The Bypass boundary in February.

But the most unexpected partnership has been with Sefton Council, in support of Crosby in Bloom. The Council nurseries supplied bedding plants and the Pram Club helped plant them.

Jonathan and Ben from the Pram Club bring some summer colour
to the front of the church office.

The nurseries also supplied plants and bulbs for a winter planting scheme which will contribute to this year’s Crosby in Bloom.

crocuses at the front of church

Both our wildlife activity mornings (March 2007 & April 2008) have been advertised as being part of Crosby in Bloom and Sefton Council rangers supervised the making of around 40 bird boxes on both occasions.

making bird boxes at the 2007 wildlife activity morning

The church organised a community bulb planting session in the grass verge outside the church grounds adjoining The Bypass, and the Council supplied crocus, daffodil and bluebell bulbs. A poor weather forecast meant we were low on volunteers, but a task force of 3 did manage to plant 2,500 bulbs!

A drop of rain does not deter Jan and Ann from planting tete-a-tete daffodils along The Bypass.

We have also developed good links with the Mersey Basin Campaign, who part funded a couple of events we organised during the last weekend in September 2007. Year 6 children from St Luke’s school sowed a wildflower meadow on the Friday and on the Saturday about 30 people helped plant 4,000 bulbs across the church grounds.

Year 6 pupils from St Luke’s school create a wildflower meadow

Lyn gets down to earth with crocus bulbs next to the church drive

Meanwhile, children planted crocus bulbs in pots which were given out at our harvest service the next day; this focused on the theme of climate change.

Biobank is a Merseyside organisation which was set up in 2007 to help people record wildlife. We are working with Biobank to equip teachers to help pupils record wildlife. We would like to see our church grounds double up as an outdoors classroom where children from local schools can learn about wildlife and value it for themselves.

Biobank educationalist Ros Bray leads a training session in the church grounds (April 2008)

We are grateful to funding from Express Sefton!, an initiative to help celebrate 'Capital of Culture' year in Liverpool by bringing out the best of what Sefton has to offer. This has made a significant contribution to helping us improve the railings around our community garden, providing an accessible path right through the graveyard, and erecting new welcome signage, as shown below.

New railings help to finish off the community garden

Rob Bradshaw completes the path in front of the wildflower meadow

Adrian produces another top quality sign which explains the development of the community garden

next page: 4 Community garden – complete with eagle!
previous page: 2 The Project
Index and Introduction

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This page was last modified on 9 October 2008.