Life After Death: America’s #Cemeteries Are #Rewilding
More burial sites are forgoing pristine lawns for drought resistant plants and wildflowers that help wildlife. Efforts picked up in the pandemic.
By Cara Buckley, November 29, 2024
"Across the country, where the dead lie, life is increasingly thriving.
It’s happening in Catholic and Jewish cemeteries; in burial grounds up and down the East and West coasts and in the Bible Belt; in sprawling private graveyards that double as public greenspaces, and in century-old potter’s fields.
"Groundskeepers, deacons, horticulturists, conservationists, arborists and newly minted gardeners are changing how they tend to burial sites. They are letting grasses grow longer and reducing how much they mow. They’re ripping out invasive plants, encouraging native shrubs to thrive, forgoing pesticides, and replacing manicured turfgrass with wildflower meadows.
"Cemeteries have often been the largest green spaces in cities, providing vital havens for wildlife. But during the pandemic, many of them grew especially popular as spots where people could safely gather and enjoy pastoral settings. In 2020, Laurel Hill, a 265-acre historic cemetery straddling the Schuylkill River in Pennsylvania, saw its attendance more than double. Green-Wood in Brooklyn, with 478 acres of rolling hills, lush plantings, thousands of trees and serene vistas, counted 200,000 new visitors.
"The surge coincided with an effort underway by Green-Wood and other cemeteries to swap swaths of manicured lawns for meadows filled with wildflowers and drought resistant native shrubs. Earlier attempts to let grass grow longer at Green-Wood had been met with fierce resistance. But as people sought solace in nature during pandemic lockdowns, they brought with them a new openness.
"'We’ve seen a huge sea change in terms of people’s willingness to accept this,' said Joseph Charap, Green-Wood’s vice president of horticulture, as he wound his way through one of the cemetery’s new meadows one sunny day in late November, feathery goldenrod and milkweed pods catching the afternoon light. “The reaction was, ‘Oh, it’s beautiful.’”
"#GreenWoodCemetery is among the earliest cemeteries in the country to be modeled after rural landscapes, and to serve as an urban park. The first was #MountAuburnCemetery, founded in 1831 outside of Boston. Others include #LaurelHillCemetery in Pennsylvania and Evergreens Cemetery in Bushwick, Brooklyn. All are arboretums, filled with thousands of trees, and located in the Atlantic Flyway, a major migratory route for birds.
"Each one has converted some of their land in recent years to wild, native meadows, working with a firm founded by Larry Weaner, the pioneering ecological landscape designer.
"'I’ve been kind of blindsided by how many cemeteries reached out,' said Mr. Weaner, whose firm has worked with five cemeteries in the last five years. 'There definitely is a movement afoot.'
"Cemetery operators said there were myriad reasons to replace lawns or turf grass with native shrubs and other plants. Lawn mowers are loud, often polluting and heavy, compacting soil and hastening erosion. Thirsty turf grass fares poorly during the droughts that are growing longer and more intense. There is also mounting awareness of the harms from pesticides and irrigation, and a growing recognition that greener practices can help wildlife while making a cemetery more resilient to a changing climate.
"Mount Auburn even has a full-time ecologist, Paul Kwiatkowski. In recent times, he said Mount Auburn has reforested pockets of land, replaced fertilizer with compost, removed invasive plants and non-native trees, and added perennial plantings to attract beneficial insects and create a food source and cover for other wildlife. One area, called Consecration Dell, was restored with trees and plantings that provide for birds, mammals, and amphibians, including spotted salamanders that live under leaf litter on its slopes. 'When you’re there, you feel like you’re out in the woods,' Mr. Kwiatkowski said."
Original article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/29/climate/us-cemeteries-wild-flowers.html
Archived version:
https://archive.ph/pVobM
#SolarPunkSunday #Rewilding #RewildingCemeteries #Greenspace
