Creation of All Souls Garden


The idea to create a burial garden at St. Mark’s first appears in the 1977 Vestry minutes and notes the idea as an appropriate project for St. Mark’s 25th Anniversary Celebration scheduled for October of 1979. A burial ground was considered an Anglican tradition, as many Anglican and Episcopal Churches do have cemeteries on site. As with all church projects, a committee was created to investigate and guide the process!

The actual idea to create a garden on the property at St. Mark’s for the burial of cremated remains had been first proposed in 1971 by Jim Potts and Ann Barbee, but no one was completely clear about how the various Business and Professions and Health and Safety Codes related to cemeteries applied to a church located in the middle of a residential zone. The subject was also controversial among parishioners, and so had never been seriously pursued.

A page from the original All Souls brochure showing the garden loction.

The initial committee minutes from October of 1977 included action items:

  1. Decide on a name
  2. Determine whether burial is a legal or constitutional right of a church body to perform
  3. Pick a site (including “compiling broadly persuasive arguments, gathering public support and applying for necessary permits)
  4. Assessing official reaction (“if bad, drop the idea…proceed as far as we can without causing a conflagration – when the fire starts, drop it.”)

My March of 1978, the committee was planning to move ahead with the project and began on ongoing campaign to educate parishioners about life and death and the “need for the parish to do something tangible about departed parishioners.” (3/6/78 Committee minutes).

Then Assistant Rector, was selected to lead the effort to educate the parish. They decided a “bald pitch” for a garden was inadvisable because:

“the subject needs to be led into very carefully since there is a large jump between intellectual acceptance of such a project and emotional acceptance that the parish, as a family, should become actively involved in handling death as a part of parish family activities.”

In April of 1978, Dean Underwood gave a sermon where he introduced the two main issues:

  • Lack of comfort with the idea of cremation, and
  • Lack of comfort with having a burial ground on the church property. A Forum was held after the service to discuss these issues.
One of the first activities was to survey the Parish to see where people stood on the idea of a memorial garden. Of the over 300 people that responded, 92% said they did want to talk about death. 87% said they planned to be cremated. 84% felt that memorial garden was a suitable project. 55% thought the church should provide a forum to discuss death. Only 1% were opposed to cremation. 30% felt a garden would be more trouble than it was worth. 60% were willing to contribute funds to support the garen. 87% felt a memorial garden was an appropriate use of church property. Overall, the results provided strong support for the proposed project.
From the beginning, the church planned to use biodegradable bags in the garden. The original design for the bags (left) was created by Nancy Sears. The design is still in use today and is hand embroidered by parish volunteers.

By August of 1978, the committee (co-chaired by Jim Potts and Ann Barbee) had:

  • Chosen a site (the then front lawn of the parish)
  • Determined that the various Business and Health code regulations allowed them to proceed with the project
  • Hired a design professional to create drawings of the proposed project
  • Received from the Palo Alto Architectuaral Review Board
  • Were soliciting bids from construction firms, and planned to construct the garden in early 1979.

The All Souls Memorial Garden was dedicated in October, 1979 at the Consecration Celebration for St. Mark’s first 25 years. The garden has now been in use for just over 42 years. Over time the Parish has added an additional plinth for names, and expanded the original garden space to allow for additional burials and installed a Celtic Cross. An annual All Souls Service honors those buried in the garden on All Souls Day every November.

Plaques with names and year of birth and death of those interred in the garden are located on two plinths. The original (on the left) and the newer plinth (far right) which was added when the other was full. The celtic posts were added in the last few years at the entrance of the garden pathways, and the new expansion area of the garden adjacent to the main sanctuary.

All are welcome to visit the garden. To see a list of the people buried in the All Souls Garden, visit Find A Grave:

This clipping from the archives from October of 1979, publicized the new memorial garden and especially noted that it was non-denomination and you did not need to be a Christian or a member of the church to be in the garden. This is still true today.

Sources

All information in this article was from:

Minutes of All Souls Garden Committee; St. Mark’s Archives; St. Mark’s, CA; Palo Alto, CA

Vestry Minutes; St. Mark’s Episcopal Church; St. Mark’s, CA; Palo Alto, CA

1 thought on “Creation of All Souls Garden”

  1. My parents, Flora & Bill Klay, my niece Amber Rose Hendry, and several of my friends are in the garden and eventually I will go there too. I love the garden.

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