“You can begin by mowing a path,” said Vanessa Conant, the first female Rector of St. Mary’s and the Parish of Walthamstow, East London.
Call it an axiom, motto or sermon illustration, but for Conant, mowing a path was the start of a journey that has transformed her parish church and her community.
When Vanessa Conant and her husband, Cameron Conant, arrived at St. Mary’s from Edinburgh in 2015, the churchyard was neglected and heavily overgrown. Gravestones were lost in the weeds, drug deals were going down in darkened corners of the church’s uncultivated property and neighbors were upset about the eyesore at the heart of their quaint, East London village.
“If I’m honest,” Vanessa Conant said, “I did not have an environmental ambition at first. I just didn’t want people to shout at me when I opened the front door of the parsonage.”
But gradually, as she and the church connected with community members and called on a parish member who is a professional gardener to help, Vanessa Conant said she developed broader commitments to using church property for the sake of biodiversity, wildlife and as a safe haven in the midst of a rapidly disintegrating climate.
“Graciously and generously, my understanding has been shaped by other people’s commitments and convictions,” she said. Adopting former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams’ notion of the church as a “learning community,” she said she not only came to see the garden from a new perspective, but her sense of the Sacred shifted as well.
St. Mary’s churchyard is the largest green space in Walthamstow Village. Covering nearly three acres, it was named “Churchyard of the Year” in the 2023 London in Bloom competition. St. Mary’s has also achieved silver accreditation in A Rocha International’s eco-church scheme, with laity also leading a “Climate Sunday” service each year.
In addition to being an actively used graveyard, the church grounds are divided into several sections, including a large woodland area along a popular walkway. They also have a range of biodiversity projects, including havens for bees, insects, birds, bats and animals. Every morning and evening, hundreds walk through the yard on their way to work or school. Some stop to rest and reflect, others buzz past like the bumblebees that flit between the blooms underneath the watchful monolith of the church tower.
Working alongside church member and head gardener Tim Hewitt, dozens of local volunteers have helped make St. Mary’s Churchyard a place where Walthamstow gathers to learn about horticulture and wildlife. They plant trees and flowers and spend time admiring and engaging with the diverse range of plants and natural features that make the churchyard a peaceful place to be.
St. Mary’s, of course, is just one garden. But its impact is much broader than what happens within the garden walls.