Cemetery Maintenance and Family Maintenance of Lots
This page was last reviewed on October 24, 2024.
Village Cemetery Maintenance
Mowing and Maintenance
The Village has initiated a mowing plan for the cemetery to improve the health of the soil. From May to September, grave areas will be trimmed once each month, as needed. Some of the field areas will be left with longer grass to build the humus in the soil, which in turn will help with water retention. Not mowing in these area will also prevent the destruction of killdeer ground nests in the late spring.
Annual Spring Clean Up
Each April, Village staff tidy up and removes items that detract from the appearance of the cemetery, including worn artificial flowers and broken mementos..
If you have any personal items, mementos or artificial flowers on your loved one’s gravesite that need to be refreshed, please consider taking them home in March to be sure they aren’t removed by staff.
Projects
The Village has a number of projects and annual maintenance to keep up with on-site works. Past projects include:
- cleaning and repointing of the entrance bricks and painting of the gates (2020)
- locking of the cemetery gate each evening to help prevent vandalism
- regular brushing the trees back and up around the cemetery border
- new block posts to identify sections of the cemetery, with more to come in the future (2023)
- annual upgrades to irrigation system that waters on-site tree plantings
- replacing the hand water pump (2024)
- top dressing the main roads with fresh gravel (2023)
- blocking some of the minor roads with boulders in preparation of future infill rows (2023)
Family Lot Maintenance
Families are encouraged to care for their family’s markers and may tend to their family’s graves.
Maintenance and Care of Memorial Markers
The Village has specialized biological cleaner that families may borrow from the Village office to clean their family’s memorial markers. Find out more.
Lot Adornments and Curbing
In 2018, Cumberland Council adopted a policy that the Village regulation, in place since 1963, that prohibits placement of grave curbing and landscaping will not be enforced for historic sections of the cemetery while the policy is in place.
This policy takes the approach that the landscaping and adornment of graves over the last six decades is recognized as part of Cumberland’s culture and heritage. The blocks identified in the policy will be left as-is and the family-placed landscaping, adornments and grave curbing be allowed to naturally deteriorate while this policy remains in place.
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