Rural cemetery

The rural cemetery or garden cemetery is a style of burial ground that uses landscaping in a park-like setting.

As early as 1711 the architect Sir Christopher Wren had advocated the creation of burial grounds on the outskirts of town, "inclosed with a strong Brick Wall, and having a walk round, and two cross walks, decently planted with Yew-trees". By the early 19th century, with urban populations expanding, the existing churchyards were growing unhealthily overcrowded with graves stacked upon each other, or emptied and reused for newer burials. As a reaction to this, the first landscaped cemetery was opened in 1804, as the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

The garden cemetery in the US was a development of this style. Prior to this, urban burial grounds were generally sectarian located on small plots within cities. The new design took the cemetery out of the control of the church, using an attractive park built on a grander scale, using architectural design and careful planting, inspired by the English garden movement.

Its first manifestation in the US was Mount Auburn Cemetery near Boston, founded by Dr. Jacob Bigelow and General Dearborn of The Massachusetts Horticultural Society in 1831. Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story delivered the dedication address on September 24, 1831. Mount Auburn inspired dozens of other rural cemeteries across New England, the northeast, and the upper midwest mostly. Many were accompanied by dedication addresses similar to Story's, which linked the cemeteries to the mission of creating a Christian republic.. Coinciding with the growing popularity of horticulture and the Romantic aesthetic taste for pastoral beauty, Mount Auburn was developed as a “domesticated landscape” popularized by 19th century English landscape design. Its plan included retention of natural features like ponds and mature forests with added roads and paths that followed the natural contours of the land, as well as the planting of hundreds of native and exotic trees and plants.

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