Sweet Auburn: The Magazine of the Friends of Mount Auburn Mount Auburn as a Muse | Page 4

A Treasured Source of Inspiration
Julie Messervy’s completed design of Spruce Knoll
Creating the
Contemplative Garden
Julie Moir Messervy, Landscape Designer
Julie Messervy’s relationship with Mount Auburn began more
than a quarter of a century ago when she first discovered the
Cemetery as a wonderful place to walk.
Messervy, a landscape designer and principal
of the award-winning firm Julie Moir
Messervy Design Studio (JMMDS), located
in Saxtons River, Vermont, received her
Master of Architecture and Master in City
Planning degrees from MIT. She also studied
landscape design under Japanese garden
master Kinsaku Nakane, first as a Henry
Luce Scholar, and later as a Japan Foundation
Fellow. After she returned to Boston, she
searched for gardens that had a similar feel
to the many gardens she studied through-
out Kyoto. “I sought out places in Boston
that had a similar contemplative quality to
the Japanese gardens I loved,” says Messervy.
“My favorites were the courtyard at the
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, which
Julie Messervy
offered its visitors a contemplative viewing
experience, and Mount Auburn Cemetery,
which, with its winding roads and paths, felt like a large
stroll garden. I was entranced…”
In 1994, Mount Auburn commissioned Messervy to design
an area specifically for the burial of cremated remains. For
Spruce Knoll, the resulting woodland garden, Messervy
didn’t have to look too far for inspiration, as much of her
design took its cues from the surrounding landscape. “…it’s
all here at Mount Auburn. The huge tulip tree right next
to Spruce Knoll, together with the views out to the older
2 | Sweet Auburn
part of the Cemetery, and the beautiful memorials there,
all offered inspiration. And then the spruce trees, with their
tall trunks and needle canopy above created a quiet space
within. The barren knoll needed definition and enclosure,
so I brought in stones and plants and went about making a
natural burial space where ashes could be poured directly
into the earth.”
Unlike a landscape design project for a residential or
commercial client, a commission from Mount Auburn
comes with many unique design parameters, including
the need to accommodate memorials and future burials.
“I was quite intrigued by how best to memorialize loved
ones while not jeopardizing the contemplative experience
of those left behind. We decided to ring the knoll with
tablets, rather than scattering too many plaques throughout
the small space. The result is that visitors feel like they are
walking through a little piece of nature, an experience that
is quite different from anywhere else in the Cemetery.”
“When you think about it, designing a space in a cemetery
is built on creating a sacred trust between the designer and
the person mourning a loved one. A designer has to be able
to understand what the mourner is going through and make
a place that can ‘hold’ and honor those feelings. And it’s not
just people in mourning who experience Mount Auburn;
it’s also those who come to choose their final resting place.
It’s a heavy responsibility and Mount
Auburn has lived up to it by creating a
host of different kinds of contemplative
experiences that draw different people to
them. Creating a place in Mount Auburn
that would stand up to all that and yet be
something new and something natural–
it was a really interesting problem.”
It has been sixteen years since the com-
pletion of Spruce Knoll. Since that time,
Messervy has worked with Mount Auburn
on the designs for other interment spaces
within the Cemetery, including Willow Pond
Knoll and several family plots. She contin-
ues to find inspiration in many aspects of
Mount Auburn, from its history to its natural
features. “There’s something about knowing
that so many important thinkers, writers,
and artists are buried there, and that they’ve
chosen Mount Auburn because of its
beauty and meaning…Then the trees, then the topography,
the Tower… I love the meandering trails and roads, I love
their evocative names. And the ponds and the waterways,
of course. And I’ve pinched myself every time I’ve ever
worked at Mount Auburn. It’s an honor to add my own
vision to the bigger vision that so many have brought to
these venerable grounds. The Cemetery staff has done a
wonderful job of honoring its history, while enabling subtle
but important changes to occur within its walls, keeping
current, while remaining his