Board of Trustees of Graceland Cemetery

Graceland Cemetery is a historic landscape of national significance as well as one of the most intact surviving works of Ossian Cole Simonds. A pioneer of the Midwestern “prairie” school of landscape design, Simonds was first to supervise Graceland and served as consulting landscape architect from 1881 to 1930.

Restoration and rehabilitation of the grounds became necessary by 1982. The client asked the landscape architect to develop a prototype landscape restoration to test a number of questions and concerns without the risk associated with a full-scale restoration of all 117 acres. Relying on archival materials that included Simond's writings, the landscape architect prepared a set of landscape design principles to guide the planting of a four-acre section to ascertain the cost of installation and maintenance and the economic feasibility, security, and safety of a complete restoration.   

Over the course of ten years, Graceland Cemetery has undergone many restorative and rehabilitative projects. The prototype landscape restoration, completed in 1992, was considered a complete success, addressing and putting to rest the clients’ concerns related to aesthetics, cost, and safety. Three other significant projects were the restorations of the four-acre Ridgeland section, the lake’s edge, and the Chapel Hill Columbarium. All of these successful projects addressed the accommodation of contemporary use and operational requirements without compromising Graceland’s historic fabric.   

The cemetery is teeming with new life. Graceland now has complex and attractive vistas, allowing people to see the artistic, spatial, ornamental, and horticultural possibilities of landscape and cemetery design.