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Front Entrance Garden
In August 2023 The Lorber Foundation gave the Friends of Wildwood Cemetery funding to preserve the main entrance stone wall and design and plant a native garden at behind the stone wall. The intention of this project was to create a design plan for a garden at the front entrance of Wildwood Cemetery. The initial design was inspired by the rural cemetery style and it is meant to enhance the cherished woodland conservation areas which characterize the landscape. To emulate these aspects, the first design focused on framing viewpoints into the cemetery while providing some sort of privacy for a seating area using evergreen shrubs and an understory tree layer. Additionally, the understory and ground cover plantings are placed within an organic manner similar to that of a woodland, but in large swathes for greater readability. As the site selected for a pollinator garden is located under oaks and maples, the planting beds are limited to natives that flourish in heavy shade. Foundational plants that provide structure to the garden such as flowering dogwood, witch hazel, roseshell hydrangea, and oakleaf hydrangea supply a plethora of seasonality. Understory plantings that cover the grounds in finer textures include astilbe, foamflower, common ginger, and black cohosh with consideration for the color white often associated with peace and reflection. Additionally the plantings contain a variety of ferns to create an array of autumn colors and textures that carry into the colder seasons. This project is broken into three phases. First phase completed: The stone wall was rebuilt in the spring of 2024. Native plants were installed behind the wall, as well as oak leaf hydrangea, with hazel, and several dogwoods the summer of 2024. Second and third Phase: The interior of the garden will be laid out as funding is raised. 
UMass Senior Intern Kayleigh Lin, garden desinger, poses in front of Front Garden area before any work began. (Spring 2024)
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The Memorial Garden is Proud to be nationally recognized as a Habitat Garden
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