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Sustainability Stories - Disley Quaker Meeting

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Disley’s garden: Open and Sustainable

Recipient of QPSW Sustainability Grant 2011Disley Meeting garden (c) Sarah Rowbotham

Our project aims to increase the biodiversity of our large garden, improve its sustainability and create more possibilities for the Meeting to use it for social and educational purposes. Issues we are addressing include: increasing the range of wildlife friendly plants; improving composting and water conservation facilities; creating a sitting area next to a renovated summer house; creating opportunities to involve our growing Children's Meeting in gardening and wildlife projects. As the project develops we hope to find ways to involve the local community.

We shall meet these aims through a series of initiatives:

  • removing dead conifer trees and replacing them with wildlife friendly plants.
  • transforming an area used for collecting rubbish into a sitting area surrounded by wildflower-friendly flowers and shrubs.
  • installing new compost bins to deal with the large quantity of green waste from the garden and educating ourselves about best practice with the help of a member of the Living Witness Project..
  • installing water butts.
  • installing a raised bed in a recently created vegetable patch (see photographs). This will enable the children to grow small items such as herbs and salad vegetables.

Advices and Queries 1.02 asks us to “maintain the beauty and variety of the world”. Our project will make our garden more attractive, with a wider range of plants both colourful and scented, and increase the diversity of insects and other wildlife drawing sustenance from the garden. Some of our past practices (e.g. burning green waste) have had a negative impact on the environment - the composting facilities will enable us to act more sustainably. In the process we are educating ourselves about biodiversity and sustainability. The garden is a spiritual resource for our Meeting which we aim to share more widely with the community as our project develops.

By Jennifer Dale