Cemetery will double as park

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34127, 13 April 1976, Page 20

Cemetery will double as park

A cemetery without visible grave markers, for use as much as a park as a burial ground, will be developed by the Waimairi County Council on 13 acres to the west of the junction of Hawthornden Street and Merrin Street.

As shown in the lay-out plan above, landscaping will be done on a large scale, with vistas .of lawns and trees uninterrupted - by ground-level plaques or headstones. Graves will be marked instead by underground plaques, locations being recorded on a detailed plan.

Tall trees will be planted to disguise the power pylon line running across the western edge of the land. A permanent irrigation system will be installed, and a dry creek will be incorporated in the design.

Entry will first be at point 1 on the map. with another entry made later at point 2. Burials will start at point 3, and the circular roading pattem shown at point 4 will

mean that mourners will never have to walk far. Point 5 shows the axial footways, large trees breaking the block up into alcoves, and No. 6 shows the line of the creek. Point 7 shows another smaller burial ground, and the two Nos 8 show walking zones. At No. 9, there will be tree planting on a parkland scale. The plan was produced for the council by Boffs, Jackman, and .Associates, landscape architects, and the council will probably start site development this winter. The County Engineer (Mr A. J. W. Lamb) said that the council believed the public would come to accept the idea. The architects’ survey, he said, had found that clergymen considered the dispensing with individual markers was reasonable, and that they were enthusiastic about the park concept. Undertakers, said Mr Lamb, felt that funerals were becoming more impersonal, with emphasis on minimising movement for mourners. People often were discouraged from going to cemeteries because of the surroundings.