The Old City Cemetery is a treasure! It is owned by the city of Lynchburg, and operated in cooperation with the Southern Memorial Association, a non-profit foundation. The cemetery's 27 acres contain five museums and an impressive collection of historic bulbs, shrubs, trees, and ROSES ... all beautifully maintained in a park-like atmosphere.
The roses are all pruned and staged for their big show later this spring.
The Symposium was lightly attended this year. This made for a very intimate atmosphere for us in the audience, and gave us ample opportunity to have all of our questions answered. The weather was threatening, with cloudy skies all day, but the rain held off until we were on our way home on Saturday evening!
This is the Confederate Section of the cemetery, with row after row of simple headstones.
The speakers this year were superb, as always. Peggy Singlemann, Director of Horticulture at the Maymont Foundation in Richmond, spoke about using flowering shrubs to spice up our gardens. Cherie Foster Colburn, a landscape designer and author from Houston, Texas, presented a program on how to create a garden to be enjoyed at night. The final presenter, a man I am proud to call a friend, was Rev. Doug Seidel ... who spoke about the history and tradition of plants in cemeteries.
After the formal presentations, we went out into the cemetery (where it was WAY colder than the late March date would have suggested), and Doug walked through the Cemetery's rose collection and told stories of the various rose varieties growing there. We were all totally captivated!
The roses won't be blooming until May, but the Hellebores were certainly putting on a beautiful show!
If you have been here for very long, you already know how much I love to spend time in cemeteries. I adore a cemetery's peaceful atmosphere and the great love that exists among the stones.
I love the simplicity and pattern of the simple head stones in the Confederate Section. The rest of the cemetery has a wonderful variety of fencing and flowers and stones ... almost worthy of a sculpture museum!
This was my very favorite epitaph. I think it applies to most of us ... don't you?
I hope to be back in Lynchburg on May 7, to help with the annual Antique Rose Festival and sale.
Later this week, I'll take you to see another one of Lynchburg's treasures. Stay tuned.
(The photos in this post were taken with my new camera ... a Canon SD1300. I'm still getting used to it. Please forgive the weird colors. I trusted the 'Auto White Balance' feature, and I shouldn't have because everything turned out a lovely shade of icy blue. I did my best to correct it in Photo Shop, but they are all still a bit off.)
