Venerable Trees by Tom Kimmerer

Author:Tom Kimmerer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2015-04-08T04:00:00+00:00

8

The Guardians

Trees in Cemeteries

Venerable trees shade the Lexington Cemetery. I like to think of them as the guardians of the cemetery, serving the needs of the living as well as memorializing the dead. Among the thousands of trees in the cemetery are the largest known basswood (Tilia americana) and one of the largest known smoketrees (Cotinus obovatus). The basswood was here long before the cemetery was established, and nearby it are ancient bur oaks, chinkapin oaks, Shumard oaks, blue ash, and kingnuts that indicate that this was once a woodland pasture.1

Lexington Cemetery was established in 1849 and was the first cemetery in the region to embrace two new ideas—the perpetual care of both graves and land, and the use of a grove of old trees to create an attractive, bucolic landscape. Until the mid-1800s, people were buried either in churchyards or in family plots on private land. Burial grounds were established around the edges of large cities. Graveyards were often unkempt and unsanitary, and graves were not permanent. Little thought was given to making graveyards attractive, especially those for the poor. As cities grew, the space available for burials was not adequate to the demand, and graveyards were increasingly a public health hazard. City leaders began to seek more sustainable means of caring for the dead just as the dawn of the Victorian era (1820) was beginning to change our views of landscapes.2

The Victorian era ushered in a romantic vision of landscapes that began replacing the more pragmatic views of earlier periods, and the style seized on as a template was the English manor-house garden. Even the idea of a garden was changing. Every early home in Lexington had a garden for subsistence, producing fruits and vegetables for its residents and, if there was excess, to sell. Soon, as the standard of living rose and homeowners could afford to buy food, the purpose of the garden began to change. Beginning in the 1820s, Lexington, along with other cities, became enamored of the landscaping movement, and its citizens began planting ornamental plants where once there had been crops.

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