Plant watching at Evergreen
Sometimes all you can do is look
The carpet of vinca, or periwinkle, in Evergreen Cemetery shone brightly in the late afternoon sun yesterday. Both and Erin and I took a moment or three to appreciate the vista before getting down to work, clearing a plot near George O. Brown's.
Periwinkle loves burial grounds, but it’s not native to Virginia, and it's aggressive. That said, it's a lot prettier than its brawnier cousin, the high-risk invasive Tree of Heaven. And there's a good chance people planted it at Evergreen intentionally. This was a thing during the rural cemetery movement. You’ll also find it in the burial grounds of the enslaved, too, where there may be no stones. Some cemetery and preservation experts, including the folks we've signed on to do our cultural landscape report, call for vinca management, not eradication, as they did for University of Virginia's historic Oak Lawn property, owned by successive enslavers, because it is “a historic feature of the burial ground.”
Whatever the plant’s fate, we will enjoy the view now, even if it reminds us of how much remains to be done to reclaim the grave markers beneath that dense tangle of shimmering leaves. We've been at this long enough for these conflicting thoughts to live in our heads peacefully.
And we—or the crew that follows us in a few years—will create a new sight, a new experience for families and visitors, one that may be vinca-rich, vinca-managed, or vincaless.