Green-Wood: Rewilding Civic Lawns, Tombs Optional
When a newly-appointed vicar in my old village suggested turning the churchyard into a meadow, the reaction was not positive. Ever since, for this former parishioner, it has been impossible to look at any tidy civic space without seeing its potential as a more interesting garden.
Photography by Valery Rizzo for Gardenista.
Green-Wood has a population of 570,000 souls, or “residents.” It preceded any public parks or arboreta in America, although some tree specimens that were here before the cemetery are part of the thriving tree collection.
A “suburb for the dead” is one way that Green-Wood describes itself.
Now that the neighborhoods around Green-Wood are no longer rural (Sunset Park has the lowest record for green space per capita in New York), and the site is squeezed between a bus depot and an electrical sub-station, its social and ecological value is more important than ever.
Native seed mixes eliminate the need for precipitous mowing on slopes. When it was first introduced, Green-Wood’s rewilding proposal met with general enthusiasm but also skepticism from owners of lots, who equated longer grass with neglect.
Traditional fescue grass is in competition with rhizomatic Bermuda grass. At Green-Wood, this tends to be Bermuda grass (Cynodon dactylon), still marketed as the answer to a thick green sward in tropical places, but horribly invasive as an escapee in the northeast.
Green-Wood is an early example of the rural cemetery movement in the mid-19th century.