Sweet Auburn: The Magazine of the Friends A Landscape of Remembrance and Reflection | Page 14

Looking Back
Thirty Years:
Craig Halvorson
and the
Evolution of
Mount Auburn’s
Landscape
By Anna Moir
Grants & Communications Manager
I
n 1990, landscape architect Craig
Halvorson first came to Mount
Auburn with his team at Halvorson
Design Partnership, tasked with creating a
comprehensive master plan for the Cemetery.
This began a relationship with Mount Auburn
that has fundamentally shaped our landscape
up to the present day. The master plan itself
has guided everything Mount Auburn has
since become. Over the years, Craig has
worked with us on numerous projects that
implement the plan, such that his influence
can now be found all around the Cemetery.
The master plan, published in 1993,
was commissioned by then-President Bill
Clendaniel and the Board of Trustees to
address a critical need for new business
and landscape approaches at the Cemetery.
Today, it can be easy to take for granted so
many of Mount Auburn’s recent successes:
it is widely regarded as a leader in burial
practices, horticulture, and sustainable,
habitat-friendly landscape design, and it is
predicted to remain an active cemetery with
plenty of burial space remaining for decades
to come. However, it was a very different
story in the early 1990s. At the time, the
Cemetery projected that if it maintained
its existing practices it would run out of
burial space within ten years, a predicament
that had to be balanced with the priority
of preserving and improving the nationally
significant landscape. Over several years
of studying the site and its history, Craig
and his team put together a detailed series
of recommendations for recapturing the
Cemetery’s early design and character, along
with new models for incorporating burial
space while simultaneously enhancing the
historic landscape.
12