Imagine wandering through a cemetery. But instead of the meticulously maintained walkways that you’re familiar with, surrounded by lush greenery, beautiful monuments, and well-organized burial spaces, you’re more or less walking through a maze. The greenery around you grows over the rocky paths, which are winding so much that you’re never even certain which direction you’re going in at any given moment. You’re walking up and down steep stairs, exhaustion setting in while you’re not even sure if you’re getting any closer to your destination. The mausoleums and other structures are packed together and on top of each other, with even more greenery growing around them, covering up important signs and information about the cemetery. And the burial plots are scattered all around, without any sort of rhyme or reason.
Did your stress level increase simply reading that? We could hardly blame you. When people visit cemeteries, they’re often there to visit loved ones. They may be experiencing grief, or they may be there when grief has lessened its hold, but either way, they’re there expecting a place of peace. A maze of walkways that are not only uncomfortable to walk on but also unnerving and confusing to travel through is not what they’re expecting. Getting lost in a maze is not the experience one wants when in a cemetery.
With mausoleums, burial plots, and other resting places strewn about randomly, rather than deliberately placed in accessible locations, that feeling of getting lost is only going to get worse. When one enters a cemetery, they plan to spend time with their loved one. But spending hours wandering, making one wrong turn after another, can lead to frustration. It can also lead to lost time with their loved one.
Accessibility is another key goal that’s important when designing the landscape of a cemetery. We believe that everyone deserves the ability to visit their loved one in a cemetery. With rocky pathways, steep staircases, and other aspects of landscape design that can impede accessibility, a cemetery may unintentionally prevent family and friends from being able to visit their loved one.
When we visit a cemetery, we’re not necessarily looking at a final result, the way you would be with other locations. You wouldn’t enter a skyscraper if pieces of it were missing. But cemeteries are different. They’re always growing and changing as new people arrive there to rest. At any stage, whether a cemetery has just opened or is hundreds of years old, the caretakers must always take care to create a place that’s not only beautiful but also functional. People visiting cemeteries may be under the stress of grief. The landscape design of a cemetery must function to relieve stress, with beauty all around and accessible spaces for all.