PHILADELPHIA, April 15 — This is a PSA and a call for support from The Woodlands community to help spread the word: people have been taking flowers from The Woodlands and this is unacceptable. Twice this week alone, visitors were seen removing flowers from the cemetery for their personal use, including cuttings from Grave Gardens and our flowering trees.
Seeing and hearing reports of visitors knowingly taking flowers from the cemetery is disheartening. It is particularly crushing to our Grave Garden volunteers who tirelessly care for gardens across the site. It takes years of dedicated work for new gardens to be established and for flowering trees to bloom. When someone takes flowers and foliage for their personal use, they’ve stolen from the community. Cutting flowers strips away the hard work of our volunteers and disturbs a bloom meant to honor the deceased and their loved ones.
In addition to visitor reports, our Grave Gardeners let us know that their flowers have been cut. While our groundhogs do like to snack on flowers occasionally, the damage caused by two-legged animals wielding shears is unmistakable. The cemetery is not a public cutting garden or a place to forage.
As a private non-profit, we rely on fundraising efforts and grant funding to support our programming, operations, and maintenance—including the seeds, bulbs, and plants distributed to the Grave Gardeners and the care of our tree collection. To help spread the message about our site rules, we placed brand-new signs at the front gate and throughout the grounds, including signs that tell visitors not to pick flowers.
If you see a visitor taking flowers from The Woodlands, please help us by reminding them of our site rules and admonishing the behavior. If you have taken flowers from The Woodlands, please make a contribution.
If you would like more information about The Woodlands, please contact info@woodlandsphila.org
or call (215) 386-2181
About the Grave Gardeners
The Grave Gardener program is a volunteer gardening group run by The Woodlands. Individual gardeners adopt a cradle grave, which they plant with Victorian-era plants and care for throughout the gardening season. As a site with many layers—The Woodlands was once the 18th-century estate of amateur botanist and plant collector William Hamilton and was converted into a rural cemetery in 1840—we are always looking for interesting ways to engage visitors with the rich history of the site. Re-planting our Victorian cradle graves is the perfect way to beautify the space and share a unique aspect of The Woodlands’ history.
Learn more by visiting www.gravegardeners.org