My Years with David Barnett
By Bill Clendaniel President Emeritus
’ ve often said that the two best things I did in my 20 years as President of Mount Auburn Cemetery were
I to commission a Master Plan and to hire Dave Barnett . Both were related , because one of the recommendations of the Master Plan was to hire a Director of Horticulture .
I had chosen the Halvorson Company in 1989 to work with a Trustee committee and staff to write a Master Plan , and Liz Vizza was assigned as the project manager . After two years of work with a large group of consultants as well as the Mount Auburn team , the plan was nearing completion . Liz and I responded to an invitation from the American Association of Botanic Gardens & Arboreta ( AABGA , now known as the American Public Gardens Association ) to give a presentation on the plan in the fall of 1991 at a regional conference at Planting Fields Arboretum , at Oyster Bay , Long Island . It was there that we first met Dave , who was Planting Fields ’ Assistant Director and the conference organizer . Both of us were immediately impressed with him .
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