Thank you for Taking Part In Love Your Burial Ground Week/Churches Count on Nature 2025!

For over 16 years we have been encouraging all who help to look after churchyards, chapel yards and cemeteries to celebrate these fantastic places in the lovely month of June. 

Churches Count on Nature is part of Love Your Burial Ground Week, focusing on the brilliant wildlife to be found in churchyards and chapel yards. It is a joint initiative promoted by Caring for God’s Acre, the Church of England, the Church in Wales and A Rocha UK. National Cemeteries Week is hosted by the National Federation of Cemetery Friends. 

Thank you to everyone who organised or took part in one of the over 400 events and activities that took place.

For those who recorded wildlife and sent in records, these are now entering the national process of verification. This is undertaken by volunteers with expertise in a particular area – for example a lichen expert, beetle expert etc. There are not enough verifiers in the UK and so there is a backlog – please don’t worry if your records do not appear on the national map for a while – they are safe and will be of great value! We have found that using the fun and fabulous app iNaturalist can help to speed up the process as taking a photograph to upload your record makes verification quicker and easier.

If you want to carry on recording wildlife, visit this page to find out how to get going and how to share your records all year round.

If you are thinking of running activities in your burial ground this year you may find our resources page useful. The map of 2025 events can be seen here.