Sweet Auburn: The Magazine of the Friends of Mount Auburn Commemoration at Mount Auburn | Page 8

David P. Barnett, Ph.D.–
a Connecticut Yankee
in Mount Auburn’s Court
By Stephen H. Anable, Communications Coordinator & Writer
Afte r a national search that produce d doz e ns
of eager and qualified candidates, the Trustees of Mount
Auburn selected David (Dave) P. Barnett to be Mount
Auburn’s thirteenth President and CEO on September 10,
2008. In a letter announcing the appointment, Board Chair
Jim Storey and Search Committee Chair Ann Roosevelt
stated, “We could not be more proud or confident to have
Dave lead this very special place into the future.” Sometimes
the best person to fill a position is the one already doing
the job and doing it well: Dave had been Acting President
since Bill Clendaniel’s retirement on July 1, 2008. A loyal
and popular Mount Auburn employee, he arrived here 15
years ago as Director of Horticulture and served more re-
cently as Vice President of Operations & Horticulture and
then as Executive Vice President.
Looking back, Dave is proud of his strong record of
accomplishments thus far, including enhancing Mount
Auburn’s horticultural diversity, improving its value as a
wildlife habitat, opening up once-overgrown vistas, and
implementing key elements of the Cemetery’s 1993 Master
Plan. He has also carried out the Master Plan’s directives to
delineate and nurture the Cemetery’s landscape character
zones—such as the rural cemetery, Victorian-period, and
lawn cemetery zones—while integrating innovative new
burial spaces into the whole so that Mount Auburn contin-
ues as an active cemetery. Dave “brought the first computers
to the Horticulture department,” guiding the Cemetery
through the establishing of a Plant Records department and
the computerization of the horticultural databases to better
manage the plant collections. “Computerizing the database
was a ten-year effort led by Horticultural Curator Dennis
Collins,” Dave says. “Volunteers, who helped survey and
6 | Sweet Auburn
identify the plantings, were a vital help in doing this. Now,
each year, we can perform a comprehensive analysis of all
of our plant collections, making their maintenance that
much more timely and thorough.
“Another cause dear to me is the implementation of more
environmentally friendly and sustainable, ‘green’ practices
wherever possible, which helps to improve the habitat for
wildlife and save us money—while helping the planet as well.
Over the years we’ve added plants that attract and nurture
wildlife at Auburn Lake, Halcyon Lake, Consecration Dell,
Willow Pond, and, most recently, at our new Wildflower
Meadow at Washington Tower.
“In a broader sense, we do many things quite differently
than we did 15 years ago—in practices such as mowing,
irrigation, fertilization and leaf cleanup. Instead of vacuum-
ing and removing all of the fallen leaves each autumn, as
we did for decades, we now use rotary mowers to mulch
the leaves in place, returning organic matter and nutrients
to the soil—and virtually eliminating the use of fertilizer on
the grounds. In addition, we have also re-seeded many nat-
uralistic turf areas with dwarf fescue grasses, which require
less water and less-frequent mowing. Among cemeteries
and botanic gardens, we are a leader in these practices, but
there is much more that we can and will do.”
In retrospect, it seems that his whole life prepared Dave
to assume Moun t Auburn’s helm. He grew up in the
southeastern Connecticut town of Ledyard, in a family
abundant with green thumbs. His maternal grandfather
owned a garden center, Holdridge Farm Nursery, in Led-
yard, and his father, a landscape architect, was responsible
for designing and maintaining plantings along the state
highways. Dave and his five younger siblings, four broth-
ers and a sister, grew up surrounded by rhododendrons
and azaleas and the “naturalistic landscaping” of his family’s
home. He regularly helped his father with landscaping and
gardening chores, and his favorite plants remain the trees
in his parents’ yard and the adjacent woods—especially the
native flowering dogwoods, which were “spectacular every
spring.”
Dave earned a B.S. in Environmental Horticulture at
the University of Connecticut, despite his dad’s fears that
making a living in horticulture might prove daunting. He
married his “high school sweetheart,” Eileen Nickerson,
just after they each graduated from college and then the
couple headed west to Chicago where for three years Dave
was the Collections Crew Supervisor at the Morton Arbo-
retum, gaining valuable experience in the maintenance and
curation of an extensive woody plant collection.
Next, the Barnetts relocated to California so that Dave
could pursue his M.S. in Horticulture and Ph.D. in Ecol-
ogy at the University of California at Davis. California’s
hot, dry Central Valley—with little rain and temperatures
of up to100 from May to November—had “a completely
different plant palette” from New England’s, and Dave
loved the program. He was a teaching assistant for many
classes and got an early, inside track about the importance
of water conservation and rais-
ing drought-tolerant plants. His
dissertation, in fact, explored
how varying irrigation regimes
influenced the root growth and
the establishment of woody
landscape plants during the first
season after planting.
Dave had “known all along”
that he wanted to work in a pub-
lic garden, and while still writing
his dissertation he was offered
the position of Assistant Director
at Planting Fields Arboretum, a
400-acre state park on the north
shore of Long Island in Oyster
Dave Barnett and his wife, Eileen
Bay, NY, and moved there in
January 1986. His responsibilities
at Planting Fields included supervision of the grounds and
greenhouse crews, as well as other staff who were charged
with the care of a 65-room mansion, two large conserva-
tories, 200 acres of gardens and plant collections, and 200
acres of natural woodland. Dave enhanced the volunteer
program and increased the arboretum’s educational pro-
gramming, especially for children. He was content, being
groomed for the director position, when a visitor from
Cambridge—Mount Auburn’s president, Bill Clendaniel—
came to a regional meeting of what is now the American
Public Gardens Association (APGA) at Planting Fields, to
Dave Barnett (center) with his executive senior team, (l to r) Vice
President of Preservation & Facilities Bill Barry, Senior Vice President
of Development Piper Morris, Dave, Senior Vice President of Finance
& Administration Mike Albano, and Vice President of Cemetery
Services Sean O’Regan.
deliver a talk about the Cemetery’s Master Plan. Bill and
Dave met, then, two years later, Bill rang up Dave to ask if
he’d be interested in becoming Director of Horticulture at
Mount Auburn.
It was May 13, 1993, when Dave first set foot in the
Cemetery, when the grounds were in lush, dazzling bloom,
including some dogwoods that exerted a tug on his horti-
cultural heartstrings. (“Bill knew what he was doing, sched-
uling the timing of my visit,” Dave recalls with his charac-
teristic grin.) Dave toured the grounds and met many of
the staff and told Bill his interest was piqued. Three weeks
later, he had a formal interview with the Board of Trustees
and Bill offered him the job.
As prominent and esteemed in the larger horticultural
community as here at the Cemetery, Dave recently served
as President of APGA and is currently on the board as
Immediate Past President. He is active and well-known in
many other horticultural groups and societies. Dave and
Eileen, an art teacher, live in Boxborough, MA, and have
two adult children, Jake and Marie, who are recent graduates
of Cornell University and Oberlin College, respectively. An
ardent runner, Dave completed his fourteenth consecutive
Boston Marathon in April, running for the eleventh year
to raise funds for cancer research in memory of his dad,
Phil, and younger brother, Jack. (He has raised a total of
$130,000 for this worthwhile and personally meaningful
cause.) Dave also loves backpacking and camping, and, last
summer, hiked 130 miles of the Appalachian Trail with his
son, Jake.
Ann Roosevelt, now Chair of the Board of Mount
Auburn Trustees, says, “Dave is an inspirational leader with
tremendous skills and insight, as well as a wonderful man-
ager who inspires loyalty and trust throughout the staff. He
is a visionary, but is totally committed to the day-to-day
details of running Mount Auburn. I’m thrilled he is our
new President.”
Spring 2009 | 7