Forest Home Cemetery once again is a place for the living, not just the dead.

Three abandoned, century-old greenhouses that years ago produced flowers to beautify the graves and grounds of the historic south side cemetery are being brought back to life, this time with vegetables.

Empty for nearly a decade because they became too expensive to heat through winter, the A-frame glass greenhouses will be used year-round by the organization Growing Power to grow thousands of pounds of fresh vegetables for city residents and others served by the nonprofit group, based on the north side.

"We're prolonging people's lives through healthy, affordable food," Growing Power CEO and founder Will Allen said recently, as he watered a sea of seedlings in the largest of the cemetery greenhouses.

"We're providing nutrients to keep people living longer, before they wind up out there," he added, pointing toward tombstones that span 200 acres of picturesque cemetery - a final resting place for soldiers, average folks and the locally famous, including Milwaukee mayors, Wisconsin governors, beer barons, bankers and industrialists.

By fall, school groups will be able to both visit the graves of Milwaukee's founding fathers and tour vibrant greenhouses to see how fresh vegetables can be planted in cities to help feed the masses.

The new urban farm is tucked in a peaceful setting with a surprisingly rich history of growing food.

American Indians grew corn in this area, known as Indian Fields, in the 1700s, according to Milwaukee historian John Gurda.

The cemetery planted a Victory Garden to supply employees with vegetables during World War II, Gurda wrote in "Silent City: A History of Forest Home Cemetery."

Premium on healthy food

Once again, fresh vegetables are at a premium while the country is at war.

Poverty has been linked to poor eating habits, which contribute to obesity and health problems such as diabetes and heart disease.

It's appropriate that the cemetery greenhouses be returned to service to help prevent premature deaths, Allen said.

Forest Home initially offered to donate the dormant greenhouses to Growing Power if employees would dismantle and take the structures away, Forest Home Cemetery President Thomas C. Kursel said.

Growing Power asked to rehab and use the greenhouses on site because moving them would be cost-prohibitive. The nonprofit cemetery agreed, and Growing Power began rehabbing and planting earlier this month.

"Imagine how many pounds of food are already in here," Allen said, as he watered the tiny cauliflower, pepper and tomato seedling in flats. "There are 60 plants in one flat, and five pounds of tomatoes come from each plant. With just four flats, that's 1,200 pounds of tomatoes."

Growing Power sells its vegetables through stores such as Outpost Natural Foods, restaurants here and in Chicago, farmers markets and corporate cafeterias. It also has a Market Basket program that offers weekly bags of fresh fruits and vegetables at below-market prices.

No food will be sold direct from the cemetery. It will be processed through other Growing Power locations.

Growing Power can produce a high volume of affordable food because Allen has developed cost-efficient renewable energy systems to nurture fast-growing plants in tight, urban spaces.

The nonprofit also is tied into a network of farmers to help provide produce year-round.

The cemetery greenhouses will be heated in winter through aquaponics - a closed system that replicates a clean river with fish and plants. It works like this: Large tanks of water stocked with fish such as tilapia are heated. The water releases heat into the air, so no other energy source is required. (Heating water also is much less expensive than heating air.) Plants keep the water clean for the fish, which also are sold as food.

The annual cost for heating the circa-1900 greenhouses reached about $20,000 when the cemetery decided to shut them down in 2000, Kursel said.

Growing food in a cemetery may be unusual, but it fits the mission of urban agriculture, Allen said.

"Urban agriculture is about finding places where people wouldn't think of to grow food," he said. "Instead of tearing down these historic greenhouses, we're giving them a new purpose."

The effort also ties in with the cemetery's ongoing efforts to revitalize itself for the next 100 years of burials. (Yes, there are vacant plots available.)

The cemetery still offers seasonal flower packages to families for beautifying graves. Instead of continuing to buy these flowers from wholesalers elsewhere, Kursel said, the cemetery could possibly buy them from Growing Power if there's enough room to grow both flowers and vegetables in the greenhouses.

Forest Home Cemetery was founded in 1850 to reflect the "garden cemetery" movement, with winding roads, grand fountains and Victorian gardens creating a park-like setting for families to honor the dead. About 40 Victorian garden cemeteries still exist around the country, mostly on the East Coast, according to Kursel.

Anyone who bought burial space at Forest Home in the late 1800s also could plant trees, shrubs and elaborate flower beds on graves, Gurda wrote in his historical account of the cemetery. Geraniums, verbenas and lantanas were seeded in cemetery greenhouses staffed by a horticulturalist.

Before the county's public park system was developed, Forest Home was a weekend leisure destination for thousands of Milwaukeeans who headed to the cemetery on Sundays - as many as 8,000 visitors at a time in the late 19th century - bringing picnic lunches and baseball mitts to enjoy the day, Gurda wrote.

Burial plots became less ostentatious by the turn of the 20th century, Gurda wrote. Self-contained memorial gardens gave way to less landscaping, and less frequent family visits. Grass replaced flowers. Cemetery crews took over grave tending. Now maintenance-free silk flowers are the standard grave decoration.

Kursel isn't the only Forest Home employee excited about the greenhouses coming back to life.

"It's going to be a happy place," said Candise Graff, who started working in the cemetery office in 1976, when the greenhouses were vibrant with flowers.

"It makes being around this type of business not as sad," Graff said. "Now there's a sense of renewal - of things being born again."