BIRCH GARDENS
In 1992, Halvorson Design provided Mount Auburn Cemetery, America's oldest garden cemetery, with its first comprehensive master plan.
This award-winning plan has been recognized as a major contribution to the field of historic landscape preservation. It addresses and reconciles two often conflicting goals: (a) to preserve a remarkable designed cemetery landscape and (b) to expand burial and memorial opportunities in order to continue as a viable business.
The firm continues to serve Mount Auburn with technical advice and designs that implement the plan. An example of this continued involvement is Birch Gardens, a new interment area that reclaims an underused edge of the Cemetery property for cremation remains and casket burials. The new design includes verdant plantings and a peaceful reflecting pool, along with an elegantly detailed, seven-foot high granite and cast iron memorial wall that replaced the chain link fence that formerly marked the cemetery boundary here.
