23rd September 2026: Astronomical autumn officially started this morning, the time when day and night are roughly equal in length across the world.
Back in April, on one of my visits to the churchyard, I wrote some notes about what a peaceful spot I had found surrounded by nature, reminding me that spring had arrived. Now we are entering autumn and Bertie (my little dog) and I - having taken ‘time out’ here regularly throughout the past scorching summer - look again at what changes are around us.
Apart from one or two orange poppies, the spring flowers have gone from the front of church and entering the churchyard the elder tree is laden with juicy black berries, an autumn feast for visiting birds but toxic for humans unless crushed and cooked or
turned into the full-bodied red wine. It is currently (no pun) the Shipston Bookfest 2026 and there is a mini trail around the churchyard to explore The Secret Garden for children.
Having lost a hive of bees last winter, the honey bees are active again. The queen has stopped laying eggs and ‘winter bees’ are born. The male bees, ‘drones’, are forcefully driven from the hive whilst the worker bees continue to forage for nectar and pollen. The bees cap cells of honey and store pollen in the hive to serve as a fuel source through the cold months. They do not hibernate; as the temperatures drop, they huddle together in a tight cluster around the queen and any remaining brood and slowly move across the combs to consume the stored honey.
Moving around the churchyard, we stop at the bench facing the yew tree and notice the bright red berries. Birds have been roosting here through the year and will benefit from eating the flesh of these berries but excrete the toxic seeds which are extremely poisonous to humans and most animals. The bench is an ideal spot to sit, listen and watch the birds, insects and butterflies this autumn. Many are preparing for hibernation and migration but a few minutes on the churchyard bench will still be rewarding.
The view of St Edmund's is almost totally blocked by a pair of holly trees but is a perfect place to realise that this dense, bushy evergreen mass of waxy leaves is now producing its bright red berries – but only on the left side! Holly is dioecious, which means male and female flowers grow on separate trees. So a female plant needs a nearby male for pollination to get berries. If you walk around, you can see the two trees side by side. They both produced white flowers in the spring. Female flowers have a round, green, bump-like structure (the ovary) in the centre that looks like an embryonic berry. The male flowers, on the other hand, have prominent pin-like stamens in the centre, with yellowish anthers which carry pollen and no green bump.
Beneath the holly, the wild cyclamen is coming through, showing its dainty pink/purple flowers and its silver-marbled ivy shaped leaves. It will soon be October, a month of shifting shades and colours. Gone will be the greens of spring and summer as we enter a world of reds, russets, yellows and ochres and the wonders of fungi. There's always something beautiful to look forward to in St Ed's Churchyard, and now, the boundary wall has been rebuilt by skillful Cotswold stonemasons in line with the regulations of a traditional ‘listed’ building.
Words and photographs by Bernard Maguire
