In 2024, Cyncoed Methodist Church made the decision to become an Eco Church. This means that, as a church, we have acknowledged the need to protect God’s creation and are working to protect the environment in five key areas using the A Rocha Eco Church scheme framework:
- worship and teaching
- buildings and energy
- land and nature
- community and global engagement
- lifestyle
We have currently reached enough criteria to reach Bronze and are now aiming for Silver.
Our recent projects have been:
- Changing our lighting to LED lighting.
- The Junior Church have been actively engaging in Eco Church by making signs around the church to remind people to turn off lights and taps.
- We are in the process of applying for a Places for Nature garden grant which we hope will breathe new life into our grounds.
Garden project update: I am thrilled to announce that Cyncoed Methodist Church has successfully passed the first stage of the application process for a Places for Nature garden package. The next step is a site visit to check the suitability of the space.
July 2026
Cyncoed Methodist Church Garden Project
When I started getting involved with Eco Church, I knew that I wanted to do something with the land that we are so lucky to have as a part of our church grounds. I had a couple of ideas on what we could do but I had no idea on how to go about it.
It was during our church AGM when a member of our congregation told us about Keep Wales Tidy’s Local Places for Nature Scheme. I could not believe how perfect it sounded. We could apply for a garden package and, if successful, we would get a fully funded garden installed on the church grounds as long as we provided volunteers to help construct it. We jumped on this opportunity and gathered some people together to start working on an application.
We knew that we wanted to use the garden as a way to interact with the wider community and the many groups that use our church building, so we chose a food garden package. The food garden comes with equipment to grow a variety of fruit and vegetables, and we felt this would be a fun and engaging activity for the community to get involved with.
After consulting the various groups, we thought would like to get involved and writing about how we felt the garden would help the community, we put our application in and waited with bated breath!
A good few weeks later, I received an email saying that we had been successful in the first stage of the application and a site visit would be arranged and from there we would find out if we would get our garden. When the site visit came round, I couldn’t quite believe it! The Keep Wales Tidy officers were wandering around the grounds saying where things were going to go and asking about site access etc.
We’ve now received confirmation that our application is successful and our garden installation is going ahead in August. We’re beyond thrilled to see this start to take shape and the possibilities that this garden will give us are endless! I hope that this time next year I can write about all the amazing things that the community has grown together!
Heather
