The Jean Meyer Memorial Garden
at Allison Creek Presbyterian Church
by
George Meyer
Background
Jean Meyer’s wish was to be cremated, and I had learned that cremation is becoming much more common than it once was. When Jean passed away in 2008, I requested that her friends send donations to the church for a columbarium in lieu of flowers. My thought was that the Columbarium would be a useful gift to the church. Many of Jean’s friends gave generous donations for this purpose and I undertook the project over the next few months. After looking into the matter, I decided that a Memorial Garden in the existing cemetery would more desirable than a Columbarium.
The garden, as built, occupies what would have been four individual grave sites in the cemetery. It has a memorial wall with room for 60 names to be inscribed on it, a polished granite border around it, and a thirty two inch paved walkway to the memorial wall down the center to facilitate adding names to the wall when required.
Use of the garden
There are four ways that the garden can be used. The ashes may be spread elsewhere, the ashes may be spread on the garden itself, the ashes may be buried in a designated sixteen inch plot within the garden, or one or more urns may be buried within one of the designated plots. In the latter two cases a designated sixteen inch square would be temporarily removed to facilitate burial after which it would be replaced, and the location would be recorded in the church records. In all cases the name of the deceased with dates of birth and death would be added to the wall.
Design of the Garden
I am not a gardener but my sister, Peggy, is. She had designed several gardens, notably one at the Hezekiah House in Mecklenburg County. I asked her to design a garden that would be easy to maintain, be green all year long and bloom twice a year using locally available plants. Here is what she came up with; in her own words:
The design was one symbolizing a river. The plants are laid out in long wavy lines from top to bottom. The Church property is near the river, many of the members live on the river and Pastor Sam McGregor mentioned the River of Life in Jeans Memorial service. I chose as many herbs and flowers as I could find locally with religious significance. The books that I used for selecting the plants were; “Plants of the Bible” by Harold and Alma Moldenke, Dover Publications 1986 ; “Herbs of the Bible” by James A. Duke, Interweave Press 1999 ; and “Herbs and Flowers in the Bible”, a pamphlet by Ann Koepke and Dale McFeatters, Forward Movement Publications 1990.
The Plants in the Garden
Daffodils, white and yellow spring blooming bulbs were called Lent lilies in medieval times to signify the drawing near of Spring, Easter and the Resurrection. My neighbors in Appalachia still call them Easter lilies. They are planted in long wavy lines from top to bottom and are also called narcissi and jonquils.
Marigold is named for Mary's gold. The yellow flowers are symbolic of the golden rays of Christianity. We planted French marigolds (Tagetes patula) , which were locally available. Calendula officinalis, which is also called marigold, was not available locally.
Pennyroyal (Mentha pulegia) is the creeping ground cover with the strong mint fragrance and the small blue flowers. It was used in ancient times to purify drinking water and is know to repel fleas. Its species name, pulegia, refers to its flea (pulex ) killing ability. It is thought to have been a manger herb.
Lilies scarlet, yellow and orange are planted below the granite marker. White and yellow Anemones are planted in wavy lines from top to bottom. Crocus are the yellow, white and blue bulbs that are planted across the bottom of the garden. (Consider the lilies of the field ... Matthew 6:28.) Ancient Palestine was a land of wild flowers. Some of the flowers that grew in Palestine were scarlet lilies, anemones, crocus, narcissi and jonquils. White, yellow and blue flowers often symbolize the Holy Family, white and yellow for Jesus and blue for Mary.
There are several small round clumps of intensely fragrant thyme plants with small round green leaves on both sides of the path. It is thought that Solomon had thyme, lavender, marjoram and savory growing in his gardens. (Song of Solomon 5:13, 6:2 bed of spices....)
Creeping Jenny ( Lysimachia nummularia ) also called moneywort because it's small round yellow leaves look like gold coins (nummularia) is a low growing ground cover. It is planted at the top of the garden on both sides. It reminds me of the time that Jesus pushed over the tables of the money changers in the Temple.
It is hoped that one or more members will take pleasure in the garden and occasionally take time to remove any weeds before they flower and set seed thus making more weeds. Weeding takes very little time if it is done with this in mind. Anything that isn’t a pretty flower or fragrant plant is a weed. As a reward for whoever undertakes this task the excess herbs and bulbs can be removed and replanted elsewhere as part of the weeding process.
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