About the Grave Gardeners

The Grave Gardeners is a volunteer gardening program run by The Woodlands. Individual gardeners adopt a cradle grave, which they plant with Victorian-era plants and care for throughout the gardening season. As a site with many layers—The Woodlands was once the 18th century estate of amateur botanist and plant collector William Hamilton and was converted into a rural cemetery in 1840—we are always looking for interesting ways to engage visitors with the rich history of the site. Re-planting our Victorian cradle graves is the perfect way to beautify the space and share a unique aspect of The Woodlands history.

Cradle Graves were popular in the Victorian era. Most would have been planted and maintained by the family of the deceased, but over the last several decades they have come to sit flowerless. When The Woodlands was established in 1840, it was very common for people to maintain little gardens in their family cemetery plots and to spend time there on the weekends enjoying peaceful green space outside of the city. The Woodlands Grave Gardeners are reintroducing this practice by pairing volunteer gardeners with flowerless graves.