BARNETT, D. 2021. THE TREES OF THE SILENT DELL. ARNOLDIA, 78(5-6): 6-7 
The Trees of the Silent Dell 
David Barnett 
cemetery, by nature, is a place where the 
past is always present. On September 
1, 2021, I retired from Mount Auburn 
Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the 
twenty-eighth anniversary of the day I started 
employment there. I had arrived in 1993 as the 
director of horticulture, having a background in 
public garden management and degrees in horti- 
culture and ecology. At first, I only noticed the 
natural landscape and the spectacular collec- 
tion of trees. Mount Auburn, after all, occupies 
a unique space in the history of American land- 
scape design: It served as inspiration for other 
pastoral cemeteries in the mid-nineteenth cen- 
tury and, subsequently, for urban green spaces 
like Central Park and the Emerald Necklace. I 
didn’t initially focus on the monuments and the 
other “cemetery” aspects of Mount Auburn. 
About two years after my arrival, I gave a tour 
of Mount Auburn to Richard Harris, my major 
professor from graduate school at the Univer- 
sity of California, Davis, who had authored a 
textbook on arboriculture. We stopped in Con- 
secration Dell, a natural amphitheater in the 
center of the cemetery, where paths on the 
shaded slopes overlook a small pond. I explained 
that we had just initiated a project to restore 
this area to the woodland habitat that existed 
when the cemetery was founded in 1831. In 
fact, Mount Auburn’s first president, Joseph 
Story, delivered his consecration address in this 
very location, noting the importance of natu- 
ral beauty when mourning loved ones. “What 
spot,” he asked, “can be more appropriate than 
this, for such a purpose.” 
I described how the restoration would require 
a phased approach to remove all exotic plants, 
especially invasive species such as Norway 
maple (Acer platanoides), and replace them 
entirely with native species of trees, shrubs, and 
woodland groundcovers. I felt proud to describe 
to my mentor how the restoration plan would 
allow me to put into practice ecological man- 
agement concepts that I had studied in gradu- 
ate school. We happened to be standing next 
to a spectacular Japanese stewartia (Stewartia 
pseudocamellia) planted in 1939. I noted that 
we would not remove the stewartia just because 
it was an introduced species, but that, when the 
stewartia eventually died, we would replace it 
with a native. I also pointed out that the stewar- 
tia had a memorial plaque on it with the name 
and birth and death dates of a woman who had 
recently passed away. 
As we talked, a woman who had been walk- 
ing nearby came up to introduce herself. She 
was the daughter of the woman memorialized 
on the tree plaque. She told me that the fam- 
ily had chosen to purchase the plaque because 
Consecration Dell was one of her mother’s 
favorite spots. The woman said she visited 
frequently to think about her mother and 
thanked me for making Mount Auburn—and 
Consecration Dell itself—such a beautiful, 
uplifting, and inspirational place. 
From that day forward, my relationship with 
the landscape changed. Talking to the woman 
beneath the stewartia, I came to understand the 
significance of Mount Auburn as a cemetery 
and the importance of serving our “clients” 
with compassion and sensitivity. The entire 
staff understands this—it is embedded in our 
culture. My colleagues have all had interac- 
tions with visiting family members similar to 
the one I experienced that day. These encoun- 
ters motivate us to continue achieving the high 
standards of maintenance of the grounds—from 
the trees and gardens to the monuments and 
other built structures—in order to ensure that 
Mount Auburn Cemetery remains the beautiful 
and inspirational place that Joseph Story and 
the rest of our founders envisioned in 1831. 
The successful restoration of the native wood- 
land in Consecration Dell over the twenty-five 
years since that memorable conversation has 
been one of the highlights of my career. In place 
