Plants Find New Home in Historic Cemetery

 

The entrance to Atlanta?EUR??,,????'???s Oakland Cemetery.

Residents of an African-American Atlanta housing project on Decatur Street developed back in 1942, their homes set for demolition as part of a public housing redevelopment project, are giving up their homes but not the plants.

On June 25, 2005, the housing developer allowed volunteers into the fenced off area, including Georgia Perennial Plant Association members, to dig up the plants in the housing units and to transplant them to the black section of historic Oakland Cemetery, between the Confederate memorial grounds and the potter?EUR??,,????'???s field.

Kevin Kuharic, restoration and landscape manager for Historic Oakland Foundation, which aims to raise some $25 million to restore and maintain the cemetery?EUR??,,????'???s masonry, roads and landscaping, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution it was appropriate the plants have found a new home in the neighborhood and stayed within the black community. The plants, camellias, cannas, crinums, hydrangeas, irises, roses and yuccas, represent 63 years of gardening that span several generations in the community. Kuharic is happy to make way for the plants, though he noted the heat of summer was not the best time for transplanting.

Oakland Cemetery was established in 1850 on farmland that today comprises 88 acres in downtown Atlanta, the third largest downtown green space. It was a rural garden cemetery?EUR??,,????'??+a place where folks used to go for walks and picnics. The cemetery was segregated into black and white sections. The African-American families that could not afford tombstones planted flowers on the gravesites instead: roses, cannas, daffodils and roses were most common, as were thorny yucca and cacti, said to keep away evil spirits.

Today, the cemetery is on the National Registry of Historic Places. Six Georgia governors, 25 Atlanta mayors, Margaret Mitchell (author of Gone with the Wind) and golf legend Bobby Jones are interred here.Sara Henderson, president of the Georgia Perennial Plant Association, told the Journal the rescued plants are a beginning to bring back the original beauty of the area.