What is a Garden Cemetery?

When another genealogist asked me what a Garden Cemetery was, I was more than happy to explain because I had been to three in Massachusetts. The first ever built was Mt. Auburn Cemetery (see my blog post for photos) in Cambridge, not far from Boston, and two are very close to where I live, the Lowell Cemetery in Lowell, MA and the West Parish Garden Cemetery in Andover, MA. The first two are really like gardens, beautifully landscaped with selected trees, shrubs and flower gardens. Spring is spectacular, there is almost no better place to go to see beauty and to take flower photos. Even yesterday, after a light snow fall, I knew my just taken photos from the cemetery would be a perfect illustration to show it's beauty. With so many trees, and narrow paths, you almost forget it is a cemetery.


Information about the Lowell Cemetery is from their web site, as seen below. 
"The Lowell Cemetery was conceived by a group of prominent Lowell citizens in 1840 as a private, non-sectarian, non-profit cemetery corporation. The Cemetery was dedicated on June 20, 1841, at a time when there were no parks in Lowell, and it soon became a place of refuge for outdoor pleasures such as strolling and bird watching amid shrubs and flowers close to the city.


The Lowell Cemetery was modeled after Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, which was organized a few years earlier as the first garden cemetery in America. These new cemeteries emphasized the physical beauty of the surroundings and created a restful sanctuary for those contemplating the departed, which was in sharp contrast to earlier burial grounds, crowded and unorganized, sometimes dispassionate and severe.


Julie Danforth, a Master Gardener, has been our Landscape Designer since 2004. Julie takes great pride in her work and it shows in our more than 50 gardens. From the early blossoms of the tulips, daffodils and alliums in the early spring, the lovely daylilies and hydrangeas and Knockout roses in the summer to the mums in the fall, our gardens are an amazing display of color and beauty. In the last few years Julie has continued to add mini hillside plantings of spiraea, nine bark, rhododendron and clematis."