Mount Auburn Cemetery: (The Friends of Mount Auburn Cemetery)

Mount Auburn has served as a valuable habitat for wildlife since long before its founding in 1831, but in recent decades its ecological uniqueness in the greater Boston metropolitan area has become increasingly apparent. In the last 2 decades, this increased awareness of Mount Auburn's special status and the growing environmental sensitivity throughout society have resulted in management of the grounds as a natural resource and as wildlife habitat as well as a cemetery, historic landscape and arboretum.

Mount Auburn has become a living laboratory for scientists studying
biodiversity. In recent years, we have embarked on projects with consulting scientists, citizen science volunteers of all ages from the local community, and professors and students from Harvard University, Lesley University, the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), and Tufts University.

Mount Auburn’s collection of monuments and funerary art give meaning and spiritual significance to the Cemetery’s historic landscape. The diversity represented in the monuments, from contemporary flush markers to lavish Victorian sculptures, helps create the aesthetic richness and unique texture of Mount Auburn’s designed landscape.

Today, preserving our historic monuments and buildings is both a priority and a challenge. After years of exposure to New England weather, many monuments – particularly marble ones – now require an extra level of care and maintenance. Since 2014, the Friends of Mount Auburn has been working closely with Cemetery preservation and curatorial staff on a multi-year initiative to raise funds to conserve the most significant monuments on our grounds. To date, seven significant monuments have been professionally treated by a sculpture conservator working with the Cemetery.

As stewards of this National Historic Landmark, we recognize that the landscape we are working to preserve is significant as much for the monuments, fences, and other built structures as it is for the plant collections and natural environment. We also recognize that as an outdoor museum of art and nature, deterioration of our monuments and structures is an inherent risk over years of exposure to the elements, especially New England winters. Mount Auburn has an experienced preservation staff and established practices in place to ensure that despite wear and tear from the natural elements, our monuments and structures are kept in good repair and stable condition for as long as possible. Our staff emphasizes preventive treatment and maintenance procedures that minimize deterioration, stabilize the stones, and ensure their preservation well into the future.

Mount Auburn is a designated Important Bird Area in Massachusetts and one of the best sites in the region to see migratory birds in the spring, and it is a high priority for us to evaluate and enhance this habitat to address increased urbanization and changing weather patterns. We seek funding to support a breeding bird survey at Mount Auburn in 2019. Conducted by consulting ecologist and educator Brooks Mathewson, the survey will focus on species composition and relative abundance of birds throughout the Cemetery. He will design and lead the study and train a team of fifteen Citizen Science volunteers to help collect data for his analysis.

Funding will support the consulting scientists and educators who are serving as trainers for our Citizen Science Naturalist program, which engages and educates learners of all ages in ecology and natural science using our urban wildlife refuge landscape as the setting. One component of the program is our phenology study, in which seventy-five volunteers are trained to make weekly reports on plant life cycles to see how they align with bird migration and are responding to changing weather. The other part is our Naturalist training program, designed to train volunteers to be research assistants for Mount Auburn’s biodiversity studies, and empower them to act as informal educators to the public.

Mount Auburn is the first U.S. cemetery to establish an artist residency program, supporting the creation of new work by contemporary artists inspired by an in-depth experience here. We seek support for the production of The Mount Auburn Plays, a series of ten original site-specific short plays written award-winning playwright Patrick Gabridge. The plays will be fully staged in Mount Auburn’s landscape with twelve performances in 2019. We are raising funds to support the costs of the full production, including hiring local talent for the director, stage manager, actors, costumes, sound design, marketing, and chair rentals.

Mount Auburn’s annual apprenticeship program provides training and experience to a student or recent graduate seeking a career in public horticulture. Under the guidance of the Superintendent of Grounds and the Horticultural Curator, the apprentice supports important horticultural initiatives such as increasing conifer diversification as a response to Hemlock Woolly Adelgid, exploring ecological sustainability in landscape operations, wildlife habitat enhancement, historic landscape preservation, plant production, and collections management.