Community partners and volunteers have once again come together this month to complete an annual scythe of the Green Burial Meadow at Tavistock’s Plymouth Road Cemetery, enhancing and diversifying nature in the process.

Volunteers from the groups Friends of the Green Burial Meadow and Tavistock Community Gardening joined forces with representatives from Tavistock Town Council to complete the traditional scything last Tuesday, which has taken place every August for the last seven years.

Using traditional, long-handled scythes, 12 volunteers and five members of the town council were guided by Kevin Austin of Skye Grove in Cornwall, who shared his expertise with the group and provided advice on how to effectively manage the meadow using a scythe as they got to work.

Lead volunteer of the Friends of Green Burial Meadow Group Hilli Mole said: “Our philosophy centres on promoting the growth and divserity of wildlife. We raked up a lot of the area and made haystacks whilst we marvelled at the wildlife. Two patches were deliberately left unmowed so as not to interrupt the bees and insects there nor deprive them of their food supply. We will cut these two patches later in the year.

“We found slow worms, hedgehogs and frogs — none of which would be here if we didn’t allow the area to grow long and go wild, although it has to be managed or else it could easily become overrun with nettles, docs and brambles. This encourages the diversity of flowers, grasses and insects.”

Since her husband was burried in the cemetery nine years ago, Hilli and the other volunteers, many of whom also have friends and/or family members laid to rest in the cemetery, jumped at the opportunity to enhance the beauty of the meadow, particularly for those who visit to enjoy. In the beginning, this involved working with the town council, who own the burial ground to alter their management of it, with Hilli describing them as “very much on board” with the projects the volunteers underatake.

Hilli said: “Every year we do this is we really put our skills to good use. After raking, we remove the hay to impoversih the soil as wildflowers and grasses prefer unimproved ground. We remove the grass we mow to enrich the species; without doing so, wildflowers would not grow so prolifically.

“We have 25 species of wildflowers in the meadow and identified nine different butterflies species on one day. It also has crickets, bees and many other flowers.”

The annual summer scything is not the only task the volunteers in the Friends group complete; later in the year they will be cutting back some of the bramble patch (again with scythes) and planting more species of flowers, dependent on the condition of the soil.”

The Friends group is always welcoming new volunteers. To get involved with the annual sycthing or any of the projects the group undertake throughout the year at the cemetery, contact Hilli on: [email protected]