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Life in the cemetery

Tags: tree cemetery

I have spent much of the day looking at Cemetery trees. In accessible graveyards trees have a kind of double meaning: they act as living memorials but also provide a green landscape through which people walk for the sake of the life they see there, not the dead. But this cemetery is not much used by the public, being next to a far superior public open space. This means that the trees are there mostly for the dead and their mourners. They also provide a home, appropriately, to crows, and to jackdaws. But their main purpose is as monuments to the dead, gaining some of their sustenance from those they celebrate.

The interesting thing about this particular cemetery is that the trees have been ignored for twenty years. Many are in poor condition, some are dead. But to my knowledge the mourners and carers-of-graves rarely raise the matter with the management. If anything what is passed on to me are complaints, mostly about roots lifting gravestones (I give any tree that cares to permission to lift my gravestone). One can only hope the departed were loved more than the trees are loved now.

The effect of all this is that, while I want to improve the tree population of the cemetery, I feel it is mostly for the dead and for myself. This is a luxury for a tree officer, for we spend much of our time trying to anticipate the wishes of others, trying to avoid conflicts between trees and humans. Here it feels like the main human to consider is myself, and perhaps some future version of myself that in a hundred years time will be caring for the trees I plant. I’ll try to give them a treat.




This post first appeared on Diary Of A Failing Nature Writer, please read the originial post: here

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Life in the cemetery

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