highgate cemetery: the ultimate cemetery-lover's destination

I have one of those bucket lists. Highgate Cemetery is high on the list. I could fly to London just to see this cemetery for a few days and fly back home without seeing Stonehenge or The Tower or anything else. I simply want to be transported to this spot long enough to sit for hours and hours, stroll, watch the play of light and dark upon it, and photograph and sketch until my fingers ache (okay, I'd probably bring the laptop to write some scary stories too!)

If you love cemeteries, this might be the most ultimate destination ever!

I’d like to thank John at the most fantastic blog Season of Shadows for making me take a closer look at this cemetery. I recall my mother and father going there in the mid 70s and talking about it incessantly. I thought it was my historian mother just cooing over all the dead historic figures that might have been buried there. It wasn’t until John featured this on his blog that I realized this cemetery didn’t attract my mother’s historian side, as an art teacher it completely enchanted her. I can understand now why when she got home she wanted to get to work forcing more vines up and over statuary in the boxwood mazes.

Highgate Cemetery opened in 1839. It was highly influenced in style by the Victorian era with the attraction of grand tombs, stone structures and statuary. It is filled with many famous politicians, artists, and philosophers who, if they were together in their live forms, would create amazingly stimulating conversation. Even in death, it appears, they express themselves in massive clinging vines, tragically posed statuary, heavy shadowy ancient trees, and all the lights and shadows you expect for a good cemetery stroll.

I had the day off and spent some time in my garden (yeah, it’s in the 70s here) and I was trying to figure out how to conceptualize the Highgate and cottage garden feel to my yard. I have the vines growing up quite nicely and have some creepy statuary. I adore gardens and gardening but for some reason have no ability to figure out what I need and how to do it. I’m hoping to get inspired, so I pulled up this video of the cemetery (above) to try and see what I need to do to get that feel. I can see it's going to involve a lot height, a lot of shadows, and great deal of dense growth with narrow pathways. As it evolves, I’ll try to get some pic’s of it so you can see where it’s going. For now, I’m digging the ability to do a lot of recycling—I want everything I use to be found aged things, so it should evolve quite interestingly.

I can see now why my mother was so inspired after her trip to Highgate and I plan to really work the themes she started at Aspen Grove but never got a chance to see to fruition. It should be nice in this desert nasty sun-blasted petrie dish to be able to have a little garden assigned just for overgrowth and shade.