I love my Savannah! I love being able to walk, undisturbed, through the Bonaventure Cemetery. It’s beautiful and peaceful. After working with Save our Cemeteries in New Orleans while a student at Tulane, I came to appreciate cemeteries as gardens and as places that should be visited more often. It’s definitely a must see experience when visiting our hostess city.
In 1867 John Muir began his Thousand Mile Walk to Florida and the Gulf. Enroute, he became enamored with Bonaventure cemetery. He even spent six days and night there and he slept on the graves overnight while he waited for money from home! He found the cemetery even then breathtakingly beautiful and inspiring and wrote a lengthy chapter upon it, “Camping in the Tombs.”
“Part of the grounds was cultivated and planted with live-oak (Quercus virginiana), about a hundred years ago, by a wealthy gentleman who had his country residence here But much the greater part is undisturbed. Even those spots which are disordered by art, Nature is ever at work to reclaim, and to make them look as if the foot of man had never known them. Only a small plot of ground is occupied with graves and the old mansion is in ruins. The most conspicuous glory of Bonaventure is its noble avenue of live-oaks. They are the most magnificent planted trees I have ever seen, about fifty feet high and perhaps three or four feet in diameter, with broad spreading leafy heads. The main branches reach out horizontally until they come together over the driveway, embowering it throughout its entire length, while each branch is adorned like a garden with ferns, flowers, grasses, and dwarf palmettos. But of all the plants of these curious tree-gardens the most striking and characteristic is the so-called Long Moss (Tillandsia usneoides). Continue Reading »
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