Mount Auburn Cemetery
Cambridge, MA
Mount Auburn Cemetery, a National Historic Landmark, is 175 years old and remains an active cemetery. The goal for this project was to rehabilitate Halcyon Lake and the landscape around it, including the Mary Baker Eddy Memorial. The lake’s landscape had been altered over the years and invasive vegetation had taken hold on the lake’s edge. In the design we restored the lake’s original edge and the views across the lake that focused on the memorial by carefully screening the other smaller grave markers and allowing the horticultural beauty of the plantings to dominate.
The landscape surrounding Halcyon Lake and the Mary Baker Eddy Memorial site, had lost a great deal of the plant material that made it one of the most beautiful and recognizable spots in the cemetery. Many canopy trees had been replaced with smaller evergreens by designers responding to changing tastes in landscape design. The landscape character had changed from open and natural to formal and ordered.
The new design was based on the findings of a previously commissioned Cultural Landscape Report and Master Plan. It determined that there were several significant landscape character types in this part of the cemetery, and that the lake formed the center from which several character zones radiated. The planting design built upon the elements of these radiating zones by subtracting details that were out of place and adding features that harmonized with the qualities that made each sector distinct.
With Reed Hilderbrand Associates, Project Landscape Architect
Next Institutional Project:Keene State College Science Center
Keene, NH
