Sticklepath’s children helped plant their own garden last week in the local church grounds as part of a project to restore the village church.

A group of village children, along with some dogs, gathered at St Mary’s Church last Wednesday (April 20) to plant herbs, trees and fruit bushes in what will become a garden especially for them.

West Devon Borough Councillor and organiser of the event, Lynn Daniel, said: ‘Hopefully the community will use it. You want to get the children involved so they come back and say “oh, I planted that tree when I was young” when they’ve grown up.

‘We’re hoping they will take ownership [of the garden] and that’s why we put it there - so the children have something that they know is their own.’

The event signals the ending of a project to renovate the church which was in danger of shutting down due to the small size of the congregation.

To save the church, Sticklepath residents put forward a bid to convert part of the building into a village heritage centre for which they received a £4,600 grant from the ‘Moor than meets the eye’ scheme, which funds local heritage and conservation projects in order to tell the story of Dartmoor.

Derek Moore, chairman of the newly-established Friends of St Mary’s Heritage Centre, said: ‘The scheme that we first proposed here was going to convert the church from just being a church. The back of the church would be a heritage centre displaying 1,000 years of the history of the village that we’ve researched. It’s been a huge community enterprise, lots of people giving up their time for free. Since the start of the project, villagers have been involved in the renovation work, helped experts with an archaeological dig at the site and landscaped the garden ready for the children to plant.

‘This [event] is the last part of what was expected by [Moor than meets the eye] and that was that children own a garden. Lynn Daniels and Carol Johns [the church steward] should be greatly thanked, without them we couldn’t have done it.’ added Mr Moore.