'Let nature show you the way'

A wildflower meadow at Cavan Cathedral is one of the first steps in the church devoting huge swathes of its land to nature.

Volunteers turned up at the sun drenched cathedral grounds last Wednesday morning with rakes, grapes and scythes in hand to save wildflower seed.

The dozen or so volunteers from the Kilmore ‘Care of Creation’ team were responding to repeated calls by Pope Francis for “swift and unified global action” to protect “our common home”. Irish bishops rose to the occasion by vowing to return 30% of church land to nature by 2030 and Bishop of Kilmore Martin Hayes was appointed national coordinator to try to meet the ambitious target. Bishop Hayes also instigated this diocesan group.

“Our job is to go out to the parishes,” says Patricia Keenan, chairperson of Kilmore Care of Creation which has about 17 members.

While out in the parishes they have stressed the urgency of the pope’s “very hard hitting” global message: “Wake up, stop ignoring the facts - we’re in peril and if we don’t act now it’s going to be too late”.

“Everyone knows about it now in the parishes,” Patricia confirms.

The group are tucking into homemade scones and teas ahead of undertaking the work - which in truth involves very little exertion. The atmosphere is very open and welcoming amongst the good natured group.

“Here today people just came along because they enjoy gardening,” marvels Patricia, “and it’s a chance to meet people and show solidarity, do something good and see the fruits of their labour.”

The chat continues as a groundsman cruises past on an impressive ride-on mower to the front of the cathedral. The implements with which the group are armed are much more rudimentary. The group who have gathered along with Barry Kavanagh, a Bailieborough horticulturalist and environmentalist to save and sow wildflower seeds.

Barry asserts that by favouring “modern agricultural practises over traditional ones” farmers have contributed to the collapse of Irish biodiversity.

“Farming unfortunately caused a lot of the problems, but farming can also be the solution to a lot of problems as well,” he says.

His suggested solution is to try to “unite” the various biodiversity projects so they “create properly linked corridors between one and the next. Money is replaceable - pay people enough to carry out these projects.”

With this focus on the traditional practices, Barry has persuaded his son Brian to don a pair of braces and flatcap and wield a scythe on the large patch of wild flowers which have now gone to seed.

How do you know when to save seeds? “Let nature show you the way,” Barry says. “This meadow has gone brown now, and the sun is drying it off - so it’s the ideal time to pick it - as the seed starts to fall itself - that’s the time when you should harvest it. You have to watch nature, learn from it.”

Barry has an ingenius hack for saving seeds. “I turn an umbrella upside down and I go across and shake them into an umbrella so you have millions of seeds collected very quickly,” he says.

Given the spell of warm days, the flowers have largely dried out, so with every swish of the scythe brings a satisfying rasping sound of slice fibres.

Amongst the ever increasing piles are cornflower, corncockle, poppies, red clover, camomile, and ox-eye daisies.

“It’s a broad mix that flower at different times throughout the season. Even though in Ireland we are after hearing about our insects being depleted - this patch had quite a lot on it - there were bees and butterflies all over it - not in the numbers we would expect, but still high enough to say what we’re doing here is positive. It’s working.”

It’s also working in Barry’s home town of Bailieborough where St Anne’s has been home to a smaller meadow for the past two years.

“It was a talking point for a long time,” says Eilis McGowan who is another driving force behind environmental projects in Bailieborough. “It was beautiful. We have to back now and do what we are doing here today.”

She likes Patricia’s idea of giving packets of wildflower seeds to parishioners and will replicate it in Bailieborough.

“We’re going to save some seed and put them into little packets and give them out after Mass to the parishioners,” explains Patricia, “so they’ll have the fruits of our labour.”

Anne Sexton is a ‘Care of Creation’ volunteer whose parish church is the Cathedral.

“It’s giving back to nature,” she says of the wildflower display. “It’s great to see that a group of people can make a difference in very small section to the wildlife and the community as well - because it’s visually very pretty.”

She said that because of its “slightly out of the way” location, many parishioners were unaware of it, but those who saw it thought “it was just beautiful”.

Asked about the progress of the ‘Kilmore Care of Creation’ project, Patricia observes they are competing for parishioners’ attention in a time of massive flux.

“To be honest it’s been slow to get them to embrace it - there are so many things going on in the Catholic Church at the minute - declining priests, and they are trying to get pastoral ministry services in there, but if you have five people in any parish - solid people - they can do amazing things. Even one person can do amazing things.”

In some ways Patricia believes they are largely preaching to the converted with regards to environmental crises, it’s just a matter of gathering momentum.

“Over the last two years there’s been so much about biodiversity, the environment - people are seeing what’s happening all over the world, they’ve seen the extreme weather we’ve been having here - they know things have to change and they know our bee and butterfly population is declining - they are our life source, so we can’t take it for granted. People are more open to change than you would think, they are not as resistant as they would have been years ago - when they thought - that’s untidy, we love a clean lawn. Not any more, not so much.

Patricia views the Cathedral project as a showcase to inspire others to take up Pope Francis’ challenge.

“This is a starting point for us, and we’re learning as we go. They’re huge grounds and hopefully the pastoral council here will be looking at this, and taking it very seriously, and working with us and Bishop Martin to be a leading example. It has great potential.”