Little cemeteries on the prairie ...

Iowa Department of Natural Resorces

I got involved over the weekend in a modest and well-mannered online discussion about cemetery maintenance, of all things. The focus was Bennington Township Cemetery in Black Hawk County, maintained as a prairie reserve. 

There have been no burials at Bennington in many years, so far as anyone knows it never has been manicured --- as we expect cemeteries to be today --- and as a result it survives as an undisturbed prairie remnant where vintage tombstones arise from a field of old-growth prairie flowers and grasses. 

Iowa's best known prairie reserve cemetery is Rochester, in Cedar County --- and the photos and illustrative text here are from a 2009 article in the Iowa Department of Natural Resources' Iowa Outdoors magazine.

Iowa Department of Natural Resorces

Rochester has a national reputation as a prairie survival success story and is widely known for its lavish display of native flowers, especially the Shooting Stars that put on a spectacular show during late May. It has its own Facebook page and has been the subject of a lavishly illustrated book, Stephen Longmire's 2011 Life and Death on the Prairie.

Iowa Department of Natural Resources

But it continues to be the focus of tension now and then between township trustees, who work to maintain a harmonious balance by practicing minimum maintenance, and those who feel that the 13-acre tract should be manicured --- and to heck with those "weeds." 

Iowa Department of Natural Resources

Currently, the trustees weed-whack around standing stones during July and rough-cut the entire cemetery during October. Family members are allowed to maintain family lots as they please. There have been controlled burns in unpopulated areas of the cemetery --- and broken and/or fallen tombstones are repaired.

Iowa Department of Natural Resources

Not every rural cemetery is a candidate for the Rochester approach. Cemeteries that have been maintained over the years, then more or less abandoned, will not return automatically or rapidly to their natural state. They tend to become unsightly, overgrown with brush and invasive species, littered with fallen and broken tombstones --- hardly demonstrative of respect for the dead.

Iowa Department of Natural Resources

Iowa's pioneer cemetery commissions, including those that operate efficiently in Lucas and Wayne counties, have taken many of these on during recent years, cleaned them up, repaired stones and now work to ensure their maintenance.

Iowa Department of Natural Resources

On the other hand --- some neglected graveyards call for a more gentle approach, especially when they contain unbroken prairie survivals. Even then, however, the cemeteries have to be managed or invasive growth, native and non-native alike, will take over.

I like the Rochester Cemetery model and wish more cemetery commissions would adopt it, when appropriate --- even sparing overgrown, wildlife-enhancing fence rows when practical. I miss those, bulldozed out of most restored Lucas County cemeteries.

And personally, I'd just as leave have my ashes scattered over a prairie remnant somewhere as planted under a patch of manicured grass.