The cemetery is a shared garden. This is how we care for it together.
Remembering someone you love at their grave is welcome here. These guidelines help keep the whole cemetery serene and respectful through the seasons, and they make it easier for our grounds crew to care for it.
Flowers and remembrances
Flowers
Cut flowers and small potted plants in fiber pots of natural material may be placed at the base of a headstone. Please plan to remove them when they fade; any left behind are gathered and composted by our staff each month. Because annuals need constant watering, we ask that they not be planted.
Holidays
For Veterans Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day, you may place boughs, wreaths, or sprays of evergreen, or dried plant material tied with natural twine or ribbon. Everything should be natural and compostable. Please avoid wire, plastic, laminated items, and signs. Holiday tributes stay for about four weeks.
Lights
Because the cemetery closes at dusk, lighting is not needed, and it adds clutter to the landscape.
Stones and plantings
Headstones
Markers are granite or slate, in soft grays, blue-grays, and green-grays. Bright colors and highly polished surfaces are not used. Upright stones are up to 32 inches tall; widths run up to 30 inches for a single grave, 42 for two, and 60 for three. Proposed monuments are reviewed by the Cemetery Committee before they are made.
Plantings
Families may plant low groundcovers, bulbs, and perennials from the cemetery’s approved plant list, with white as the leading flower color, within two feet of the stone, after a planting plan is approved. Clipped hedges around individual plots are no longer permitted. Existing hedges will be removed over time as they decline, in keeping with the Olmsted design.
If you would like to plant something, or to ask about a stone, please call the cemetery office at (516) 692-6748 first. We are happy to help.