‘So what are we doing this morning Adam?’ Our usual question when we arrive for a Highgate cemeteries gardening shift – and usually the answer is ivy clearance, bramble bashing, or reducing the overhanging trees so that visitors can walk underneath. But this morning we were put on ‘special duty’ – uncovering a grave. We …
graves in Highgate West cemetery
To uncover – or not to uncover- the graves?
When I first visited Highgate Cemetery 20 odd years ago most of it looked like this – and indeed, much of it still does. Lush, wild and woolly, a haven for wild life. It is after all a wild life reserve. But what of the graves? Even the upright ones are buried in ivy – …
Highgate Cemeteries and the catacomb
The West Cemetery is looking especially beautiful at the moment, the headstones struggling to hold their own amongst the wild garlic, the three cornered leeks and the newly unfurling ferns. And it is in the West Cemetery that we were working today, back on the trail of lost graves. Lost because although each grave is …
Bracken and ferns in Highgate cemeteries
Did you know that although they look almost identical brackens and ferns are very different plants? In my ignorance, I didn’t, until I showed up for last week’s gardening session at Highgate cemeteries. This is a fern, all of its leafy stems shooting up, fountain-like, from a central bole. While ferns do spread they are …