Mount Auburn Cemetery

Mount Auburn Cemetery will use new technologies and field data collection methods to inventory, document, and map the plant collections within a five-acre area surrounding Washington Tower, a highly diverse horticultural area within the cemetery. The project will engage the services of a consultant from the Alliance for Public Gardens GIS to advise on hardware and software infrastructure setup, field equipment training, workflow development, field inventory, and mapping methods. A Plants Record Intern will perform the fieldwork and carry out data processing. Lessons learned will be shared through the Mount Auburn website, its members' magazine, and a one-day workshop for regional peers. The results of this work will not only generate a useful inventory and map of the collections in this five-acre area, but will also inform Mount Auburn's future mapping and inventory projects, serve as a model for improved stewardship of the cemetery, and help other institutions conducting plant inventory projects in the future.