St Saviour’s Church garden in Brownhill, near Batley took a Golden Rose Award at the recent Yorkshire in Bloom ceremony and was declared truly amazing by the judges.
The church garden has been a passion of Carol Pearson since 2007 when a new car park was laid and much of the original garden dug up. The vicar, Revd Patrick Senior, asked people to donate plants as part of his ‘new beginnings’ theme for Easter that year and since then, Carol and her hardworking gardeners have never looked back.
A professional gardener who had promised to help never turned up so little by little areas were dug over and planted with plants given by congregation and community. Some were given in memory of loved ones. David Lawrence, Brian Lee and others helped Carol garden, while others got involved for the big projects. A Saturday working party removed Leylandii trees and soldiers from a local Army Recruitment Centre helped move stones to construct a Memorial Garden. And an Easter garden was planted.
Step by step the garden has been developed to be both useful and beautiful. Grassed areas provide space for children to play. A disabled car park area with attractive bedding was built near the church hall door. Yorkshire in Bloom judges said a beautiful transformation had taken place with the combined help of soldiers, congregation, community and the foresight of Carol Pearson to create a very impressive display.
Carol explained how she sees the importance of the garden in the mission of the church.
“The garden is used as a thoroughfare by local people. None of them are members of St Saviour’s and none of them come inside the building but they all talk to me and are interested in what is being done in the garden.”
“I was amused a few weeks ago when talking to a local dustbin man. As he returned the bin he said, “It’s grand to see a church being looked after, most of them seem to be falling down”.
(Left) Carol Pearson being presented with the YiB Gold Award by JimButtress at the annual YiB Award Ceremony in York.