In The Lively Place, Stephen Kendrick celebrates this vital piece of our nation’s history, as he tells the story of Mount Auburn’s founding, its legacy, and the many influential Americans interred there, from religious leaders to abolitionists, poets, and reformers.”ĭead in Good Company is a collection of of essays, poems and wildlife photographs of Mount Auburn Cemetery edited by John Harrison and Kim Nagy. Beyond Mount Auburn’s prescient focus on conservation, it also reflects the impact of Transcendentalism and the progressive spirit in American life seen in advances in science, art, and religion and in social reform movements. Even today this urban wildlife habitat and nationally recognized hotspot for migratory songbirds continues to connect visitors with nature and serves as a model for sustainable landscape practices. This cemetery, located not far from Harvard University, was also a place that reflected and instilled an imperative to preserve and protect nature in a rapidly industrializing culture-lessons that would influence the creation of Central Park, the cemetery at Gettysburg, and the National Parks system. “When Mount Auburn Cemetery was founded, in 1831, it revolutionized the way Americans mourned the dead by offering a peaceful space for contemplation. The Lively Place by Stephen Kendrick, tells the history of the cemetery: Two books explore the history and wildlife of the cemetery. Mount Auburn Cemetery is open daily 8 am–7 pm at 580 Mount Auburn St., Cambridge, MA 02138, (617) 547-7105, .Īn excerpt from The Garden Tourist’s New England. Sweet Auburn, as it came to be called, continues to function as an active cemetery and a pastoral landscape that is visited each year by more than 200,000 people from around the world. Mount Auburn has become a world-renowned ornamental horticultural landscape, a National Historic Landmark, and a leader in historic landscape preservation and ecologically sustainable landscaping.
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They include Japanese umbrella pines, yellowwoods, amur cork trees, plane trees, weeping cherries, sweetgum, and weeping pagoda trees. The cemetery is planted with more than 5,000 trees spanning 600 varieties. Today, the cemetery still upholds Bigelow’s natural, oasis-like vision, and has grown to 175 acres.
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Its success inspired the designs of other cemeteries, and launched the American parks movement.
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As news of the garden cemetery spread, horticulturalists from around the world sent gifts of seeds.īy the mid-1800s, the site was internationally renowned as a horticultural attraction and pleasure ground, with picturesque landscapes, winding paths, a variety of horticulture, and sculptural art. He also established a separate experimental garden at Mount Auburn, planted with many domestic and exotic varieties of fruits, flowers, and vegetables. Dearborn partnered with civil engineer Alexander Wardworth in laying out winding roads that followed the natural contours of the land, and retaining naturalistic elements such as wooded areas and ponds. It also incorporated architectural elements such as castles, rustic cottages, and Gothic ruins into its design, which was particularly suited to a cemetery with its statuary and mausoleums. The picturesque style celebrated nature and embraced the topography and unique physical characteristics of a site. He incorporated ideas from the English picturesque landscape style and the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris into his plan for Mount Auburn. Dearborn (above right), President of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, was largely responsible for the cemetery’s design.