Plants as Natural Memories

'Neath the welcoming pineapples and through Tallulah's gates one enters Memory Hill Cemetery, a sacred hill to both God and nature. The natural beauty of Memory Hill is enhanced by the great red and deodora cedars, sugar berries, magnolias, pines and mighty oaks - live, red, water, white, and willow. The trees further serve to form a sheltering canopy for the many shrubs and smaller trees to be found. Arborvitae, cherry laurels, crape myrtles, dogwoods, and tree and dwarf boxwoods join the stately trees as the oldest plants in the cemetery and in lending their shade and their particular gifts to the panorama. Ivy, resurrection fern, poison ivy and Virginia creeper wrap many trees and add their own displays.

There is no shortage of color and contrast thanks to the seasonal blessings of berries, flowers and foliage. They include camellias, daylilies, species of euonymous, flowering fruit trees, hollies, iris, Japanese maples, nandinas, photinias, pyracanthas, sago palms, spireas, and tea olives. Among the plants added since the early 1980's are altheas, Bradford pears, more crape myrtles, cryptomerias, Kwanza cherries, Leyland cypresses, podocarpuses and sky rocket junipers.

Within the cemetery are special areas of botanical interest, which have been placed by families, friends and interested groups over the years. Around the Louis H. Andrews gazebo and the Tallulah Kinney Schepis front gates, the landscaping includes daylilies, dwarf gardenias and Lady Banksia roses. At the grave of Selma Erwin [East Side, Section A, Lot 8, Number 4] is a tea olive and pink primroses. Both plants were special to her and to the many students and friends her life influenced. The maintenance and carefully selected flora around Eric Williamson's grave [West side, Section A, Lot 57, Number 2] show great love with seasonal colors of azalea, daffodil, dianthus, iris, oxalis, sedum, thrift and violet flowers. The Pennington plot [West side, Section E, Lot 21] is landscaped attractively and has an urn which is filled with fresh flowers or plants. The great magnolia on the Edwards lot [East side, Section E, Lot 21] has special shiny small leaves which have been used to decorate for family weddings and many other special events in Milledgeville.

Various boxwoods, called tree or dwarf, are varieties of Buxus sempervirens. The greenery from these boxwoods along with nandina berries, arborvitae foliage and wooden roses from the deodara cedars have been used as decorations for many churches, homes and special events. The Milledgeville Garden Club, under the presidency of Mrs. Frank (Beverly Ann) Evans, Jr., has been instrumental in many of the beautification projects since 1980. Garden Club additions include the magnolias planted near the west side of the cemetery, the crape myrtle planted outside along Franklin Street, the Bradford pears, Kwanza cherries, Leyland cypress and others planted along the cemetery drives.

Mrs. Frank (Elizabeth) Minter wrote an interesting paper entitled "Our Trees, Symbols of Milledgeville's Heritage" in 1987. The paper includes information on many of the trees of Memory Hill. An excerpt from the paper is as follows.

No talk on Milledgeville's trees would be complete without a look at the trees in Memory Hill Cemetery. Louis Andrews took me on a two hour tour of the cemetery, pointing out special trees and relating stories which kept me entranced.

Planting of the large old cedars and oaks is attributed to the third and fourth mayors - Mayor Grantland and Mayor DeLaunay. Some special trees which Louis introduced me to were:

1. The Masonic Oak in memory of Ezra Evans [East side, Section I, Lot 13] whose tall monument is turned to face the rising sun.

2. In 1840 a child of Judge Iverson Louis Harris [East side, Section I, Lot 78] died and an oak tree was planted in his memory.

3. Milledgeville's first Methodist church, built in 1805⁽¹⁾, was located in the cemetery. A granite monument [West side, Section D, Lot 89] now marks the site. Nearby is the oak tree which was planted (to honor John Wesley) when the church was built. An oak was chosen because of the Wesley Oak in Savannah.

4. A small pine tree is growing next to Charles Holmes Herty's grave [West side, Section D, Lot 30]. Herty, born in Milledgeville, developed a method of making paper from pine trees. Other pines planted there have died, but this one, given by Mickey Burrus, seems to be thriving.

5. A brother of Mr. Carl Vinson [West side, Section H, Lot 5], killed in World War I, is memorialized by an evergreen tree planted by his mother.

The next time you are in the cemetery look to the left as you approach the gate on your way out. You will see a privet hedge, the only remaining evidence of a Black Methodist Church which was built about the same time as Flagg Chapel Baptist.

From an educator's view, there is no more interesting place to teach a botany class. The trees of antiquity, the more recent horticultural specimens, the vines and shrubs, the annuals and perennials, the mosses and lichens on the tombstones, resurrection ferns, and even the occasional poison ivy that have crept in all help make this a natural area of great interest and beauty. Even the graves speak of botanical history. J. Edison Adams [West side, Section H, Lot 25, Number 14] was a botany professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and world authority on the genus Cornus (dogwood). He was an influential teacher of many botanists who entered college teaching, including one of the authors. Everything here seems connected.

Virgil Lawrence, Elizabeth Minter and Harriet Whipple

1. Bonner's history of Milledgeville puts the date at 1809, while a monument in the cemetery reads "about 1805" [Eds.].