Planting starts in a new community garden in Rhos y Medre Churchyard

Part of a churchyard in Wrexham is being converted into a community garden and orchard.

An area of St John’s Churchyard in Rhos y Medre, no longer used for burials, is becoming a community garden with raised planting beds, fruit bushes, trees and herbs.

Children from The Gardening Gang, who attend The Land Play Centre in Plas Madoc every Friday have started planted fruit bushes and herbs for the new community garden. The plants, compost and a selection of heritage Welsh Apple Trees, have been provided by Keep Wales Tidy through the Local Places for Nature campaign funded by the Welsh Government.

You can find out how and why this project began in this short film.

This is the latest project started by GroWrexham, an initiative by churches in Wrexham to encourage people to grow their own fruit and vegetables. GroWrexham has given out 200 sets of gardening equipment which included compost, grow bags, pots, a trowel and fork, a watering can and packets of seeds.

The Vicar of St James’ Church in Rhosddu, Revd Sarah Errington, came up with the idea for GroWrexham. She said: “I realised last year during the first lockdown that many more people would experience financial difficulty and being able to feed themselves and their family could be difficult.

“GroWrexham is a simple way of supporting people to help themselves. With the right tools and some straightforward advice, we’re hoping that more people across the town will have access to fresh and healthy fruit and vegetables.

“We know that gardening has a positive effect on people’s physical and mental health and being able to eat fresh fruit and vegetables is important for a good diet.

“As Christians, we want to be supporting our communities and help people live healthy and positive lives.  GroWrexham has its roots in the belief that God created us to cultivate and care for the earth, and gave us whatever grows out of the ground for food.”

The GroWrexham project is keeping in contact with people via a Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/GroWrexham ) and is planning a thanksgiving service for those involved around the traditional season of Harvest, in the Autumn.

All the churches involved in GroWrexham are part of the Diocese of St Asaph, one of the six dioceses in the Church in Wales.  More than 200 churches and 51 church schools are part of the diocese of St Asaph, which stetches from Llandudno Junction in the north-west of Wales to Newtown in mid-Wales.