Sweet Auburn: The Magazine of the Friends of Mount Auburn Mount Auburn as a Community Resource | Page 12

People and Happenings
A New Vision for the Grove Street Corridor
by Candace Currie , Director of Planning and Sustainability
For the past few years the staff and Truste e s
of Mount Auburn Cemetery have been developing long
range plans for a new greenhouse and other visual and
programmatic improvements on the western edge of the
Cemetery. Working with the Boston architectural firm of
William Rawn Associates and the Watertown landscape
architectural firm of Reed|Hilderbrand Associates, we
are currently in the schematic design planning phase for a
multi-dimensional complex of facilities in the area called
the Meadow Extension (parcel A in the drawing) near our
existing greenhouses northeast of Grove Street. In addition to
the new facilities and the horticultural improvements, new
burial space will be created to help extend Mount Auburn’s
future as an active cemetery. President Dave Barnett has
said “Mount Auburn’s vision to elevate the horticultural and
cemetery services to new levels of excellence and innovation”
will improve the streetscape for our Watertown neighbors
along Grove Street in addition to improving these programs
for our visitors and clients.
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We are on track to complete the schematic design in the
fall of 2009, and anticipate meetings with the Watertown
Planning and Zoning boards in early winter on construction
plans for the new Horticulture Center. The groundbreaking
ceremony for new greenhouses is tentatively scheduled for
April 2011.
Since the 1940’s, Mount Auburn has owned a piece of
land (parcel C) on the southwest side of Grove Street known
as the “pit property”. Over the decades the purpose of the
pit changed; originally used to dispose of interment fill, it
became the Cemetery’s main composting site including
materials deposited by outside landscapers. (Non-Mount
Auburn landscapers are now prohibited from using the site,
which reduces truck traffic). Biodegradable materials such
as leaves, grass clippings, and prunings from shrubs and trees
are mixed together with interment fill to create nutrient-
rich topsoil that is used in flower beds and lawn areas. In
June 2009, Mount Auburn purchased the adjacent property,
former Aggregate Industries site (parcel B). This purchase