A cemetery is a place of mourning and remembering. It is a meeting point between the living and dead and it should be beautiful, calming and inviting.
Mourners leave flowers at graves and on columbarium walls. Many newer designs for these walls incorporate a clip or loop beside each plaque to hold a small posy.
Landscape Design
The cemetery landscape must be beautiful but also able to support the needs of visitors. For example, ponds are an attractive and soothing feature that attract wildlife, and they can be designed to serve double-duty by managing storm water drainage.
Cemetery design involves many aspects of landscape architecture, including hardscapes, planting and site planning. It also considers the religious and cultural traditions of the community.
Modern cemetery designs must be more than a place to lay a grave; they need to be a vibrant celebration of life, family, history and individuality – integrated within a shared community. This takes a special kind of know-how.
Grever & Ward will prepare highly functional, attractive and salable burial section plans that reflect contemporary needs for operational and maintenance economy. These plans include all lot lines, essential dimensions, a lot numbering system and monument locations for each occupied or unoccupied plot. The design also includes an underlying drainage system that supports the day-to-day operations and maintenance of the cemetery.
Plantings
Cemetery design often includes a variety of plantings to create a landscape that is both calming and beautiful. These plantings are not just for decoration, but they also provide a variety of ecosystem services such as shade and air quality control.
Some of the most important plantings in a cemetery are those that are planted around a gravestone or memorial. These include low-growing shrubs that don’t hide inscriptions and help keep soil from splashing back during rainstorms or preventing lawnmower blades from damaging the monument.
Typically, these are perennial plants like flowers or herbs that bloom at different times throughout the growing season such as crocus, daffodils, tulips and later blooming plants like beebalm and catmint. They can be arranged in a flower bed or in a small planter to add color and beauty to the grave site.
Ponds
Cemetery ponds are important for the aesthetic of the cemetery. They are a beautiful and serene place where people can visit the graves of loved ones to pay their respects and honor them for their contributions. Ponds are also a vital source of water to sustain the flora and fauna in the cemetery. Ponds are important in the design of a cemetery because they help to reduce pollution and prevent erosion.
Ponds can be designed in a variety of shapes and sizes. They can be shaped with geometric lines for architectural or flower gardens or irregular lines for picturesque or modern-style garden designs. In general, ponds with more vegetation and more diversity are better for both beta and gamma biodiversity than ponds without.
Stephen Chiavaroli is a certified GIS Professional and Cemetery Development & Strategic Planning Consultant. He has years of experience providing in-depth Cemetery mapping and planning solutions. His innovative ideas and knowledge make him an invaluable asset to any cemetery.
Lighting
Cemeteries are incredibly important to many communities. They provide more than just a place to be buried and can be a positive experience with the right outlook. With the right design, they can be a peaceful, bright, and ideal space that even children would enjoy.
Cemetery sections are designed by balancing burial needs with technical requirements and identifying existing geographic assets. These plans are often digital AutoCAD files for maximum accuracy and flexibility. Cemetery sections are then mapped with an identification system that ensures that every grave in the section is properly identified and interred.
In addition, cremation has prompted cemetery designers to consider new innovations like columbarium walls that are more space efficient than traditional burial plots. These spaces can be leased to individuals for a small fee which generates a municipal funding stream and allows families the choice of having their loved ones scattered elsewhere. This is a new way of thinking about death and our relationship with it.