May 20th is World Bee Day, a UN-designated effort in support of sustainable development. The event is spearheaded by The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Various activities worldwide aim to get the message out that bees are under threat and that, in the words of the FAO’s Director-General QU Dongyu yesterday,…

Visitors to Heene Cemetery may be intrigued by two lines of text on the large noticeboard just inside the cemetery gates. They are: “This Cemetery has been formally designated a Site of Nature Conservation Importance (SNCI)”. This post explains what this means. Heene Cemetery (aka St Michael’s Graveyard) was given the SNCI designation by West…

Heene Cemetery is designated a Sussex Site of Nature Conservation Importance, and is managed as a nature reserve, with consideration for the need to maintain access to the graves and to treat them with due respect. Read why neatness and tidiness do not encourage wildlife, or provide for its needs…

In celebrating the 500 different species that have been counted in Heene Cemetery, we are reminded that this project is an attempt to demonstrate the fruits of encouraging biodiversity. This coincides with the COP15 Biodiversity Conference being held in Montreal, which provides one more opportunity to reconsider what we can do in our own gardens.

Botanic Gardens Conservation International published a landmark State of the World’s Trees report in 2021, the culmination of five years of research. Of the world’s 60,000 tree species, they found that 17,500 tree species are at risk of extinction. The trees of Heene Cemetery are a miniscule part of that enormous picture, yet that context…

Lichens are interesting; they are a relationship between a fungus and an algae. The fungus provides protection and a home for the algae whereas the algae photosynthesise and provides nutrition, in the form of sugars, for the fungus. This sort of relationship, where two organisms live together and cannot live separately, is called symbiosis. If…

You may barely notice it happening, your ears and eyes registering nothing of their presence alongside you as you walk around the cemetery. Then as spring moves into summer, you will one day hear or see your first bush-cricket or grasshopper of the year. To help prepare you to be thrilled by these exquisite creatures,…

Mosses are miniature marvels, almost hiding from us in plain sight. They are nature’s velvet cushions. Their small-scale intricacy is a delight when viewed close-up, as you can see in the photographs below. Globally, there might be 20,000 different species of moss. In Britain, one can find around 760 moss species. In Heene Cemetery, we…

Giving pollinators a helping hand is the least we can do in the face of the climate crisis that world leaders are assembling in Glasgow to discuss this November. But the need to do so is pressing – and easy.

What’s causing a buzz in Heene? We caught up with our bee-keeper, Stuart, to learn a little more about him and to hear the latest about how the resident honey bees at Heene Cemetery hives are getting on.