PARK AND C EM ET ER Y. 
306 
LAWN TREATMENT TO SET 
OFF MONUMENTS 
AN ATTRACTIVELY PLANTED BACKGROUND FOR FINE MONUMENT IN GREEN- 
WOOD CEMETERY, KNOXVILLE, TENN. 
One of the eemeteries that “started right” 
with a thoroughgoing lawn plan through- 
out and that can furnish many lessons in 
management and development on modern 
lines is Greenwood, Knoxville, Tenn., whose 
unique pergola entrance was recently de- 
scribed and illustrated in these pages. 
One of the matters that receives careful 
attention at Greenwood is planting to set 
off monuments, and the two photographs 
shown here illustrate how good shrubbery 
plantings and a judicious mingling of open 
lawn, trees and monuments combine to 
make attractive cemetery scenery. 
That the lot owners appreciate the beau- 
ties of the modern lawn cemetery was re- 
cently forcibly demonstrated to the man- 
agers of Greenwood by a letter written to 
the cemetery authorities and later published 
in the local papers. 
We quote as follows from it as illustra- 
tive of the attitude of the cemetery visitor : 
One often hears the remark, “How quickly we 
are forgotten when we are gone.” It is a cold 
cruel sort of a thing to say in the presence of the 
recently bereaved especially, no matter how true it 
may be. 
That one is quickly forgotten when gone was 
forcibly brought to the minds of some citizens in 
Bast Knoxville by an incident which occurred 
■during the opening of Jefferson S’treet into Hen- 
derson Street, some twenty years ago. Jefferson 
is a narrow street running along the north bound- 
ary of the old “Methodist Hill” cemetery. This 
cemetery was laid out probably 110 or 115 years 
ago. Naturally the city .authorities presumed that 
the old ramshackle fence surrounding the cemetery 
contained all the bodies ever buried in this 
cemetery. However, in grading down the street 
they cut through a dozen graves. In places only 
a thin black seam about the thickness of one’s 
hand indicated where the coffin, with the body it 
contained, had been alxrut wholly absorbed back to 
original dust. But in one place the workmen’s 
pick struck a heavy metallic case. It was decided 
by those in charge of the work that, while metal- 
lic coffins are common now, only the very well to 
do provided such modes of burial back in the 
days when this casket was. put in the ground. An 
effort was made to scour off the plate bearing the 
name, but it was so badly eroded as to be unde- 
cipherable. It was decided to remove the lid, and 
to the astonishment of everyone, there appeared the 
face of a beautiful girl, apparently about fifteen 
years of age, in a perfect state of preservation. 
Every day thoughts of thousands of the living go 
out to loved ones whose bodies have been laid to 
rest in some cemetery, and what a consolation to 
those living it would be to know that the bodies of 
their immedate household had been entombed in a 
cemetery which had been established on a plan 
whereby the resting place of everybody confined 
therein will be guaranteed to be perpetually kept 
:n an attractive and befitting maimer, no mat- 
ter what becomes of the living. 
Thousands of fathers and mothers worry and 
sigh to. know if the graves of children buried in 
some cemetery hundreds of miles back at the 
former home, are being cared for at all. 
There appears only one way to obviate this w’orry 
and care of the living for the graves of the depart- 
ed ones, and that is to conduct, the management of 
the cemetery on busness principles — however harsh 
the term may seem in this connection. The new 
modern cemetery situated two or three, miles north 
of Knoxville, known as “Greenwood Cemetery” is 
organized on just such a plan that the manage- 
ment converts the major portion of the first funds 
arising from sale , of lots, into a fund for im- 
proving the property, and a perpetual fund for 
mantaining these improvements. 
Each year shows a marvelous improvement in 
the beautiful growth of flowers, shrubs and trees, 
until now there is practically but one universal 
and insistent remark made by visitors, and that 
is that a “burial park” is a far better idea than 
a “cemetery” which carries with it more or less 
the idea of briars and brambles. 
We wish we could' say something that would 
induce people to visit this beautiful burial park. 
We insist that the beauty of the pergola at the 
main entrance, the marble columns^ at the gate- 
ways, the marble dressed roadways through the 
park, the artistic settings of trees, rare plants 
and great beds of lovely flowers, the whole arranged 
on a carefully developed plan of one of the world’s 
greatest landscape artists, surpass any description 
we can attempt. But why not go and view this 
beautiful place some Sunday afternoon, as the writer 
recently did, and come away impressed with the 
idea that after all, a cemetery may be so planned 
and managed that it “turns sorrow into joy and 
causes the pangs of death to seem less real.” 
The “Friedrich Spohr” monument shown 
here is a striking object lesson in how the 
Germans educate the public in modern cem- 
etery art and in the setting off of monu- 
ments by appropriate planting. This me- 
morial is an unusually fine architectural 
tablet memorial, with a niche for vases and 
flowers in the die. The just proportions, 
the massive effect secured by the projecting 
die, and the well-balanced arrangement of 
inscription and vase niche are especially to 
be noted. This design is the work of H. 
Kaletsch, and was selected in a competition 
of German artists and architects, and exe- 
cuted in that country exclusively by the 
members of the Association of German 
Granite Workers. It is of German Miirker- 
wald granite. We are indebted to the above 
organization for permission to publish this 
interesting picture. 
FINE LANDSCAPE OF TREES, OPEN LAWN AND MONUMENTS IN GREENWOOD 
CEMETERY, KNOXVILLE, TENN. 
