Sacred Places
Garden of Peace and Remembrance at St. Anne's Cemetery
A meditative nook in a 300-year-old cemetery, built for the neighbors as much as the buried.
WHERE
Annapolis, MD
SETTING
Neighborhood
PARTNER INSTITUTION
St. Anne's Parish
Visit
Where it is
Northwest Street & W Washington St, Annapolis, MD 21401
What happens here
Neighbors are welcome here, not only parishioners. Since the site was cleared, the woodland behind it is much easier to reach, and the Firesouls plan to add more pathways through it.
HOW IT CAME TO BE
For the graves without names.
Drag to see the transformation.
01
The Need
St. Anne's Cemetery, a historic burial ground in downtown Annapolis, has not always felt welcoming to the neighborhoods around it. Many people buried there lie in unmarked graves or under names no longer known.
02
The Vision
The parish holds inclusion, outreach, justice, and reconciliation as key values, and the cemetery was deeply committed to continuing its tradition of welcoming any community member to be buried there regardless of parish membership, and of remaining accessible across socioeconomic levels. Honoring the unnamed dead was the key focus for the site. Neighborhood children came on a field trip and drew their ideas for the space; those drawings hung as a gallery at the first charrette, a community dinner with a local band. A second charrette followed a church service, and a steering committee worked through the initial design questions.
03
The Transformation
The site's natural beauty, tucked against a hillside and the creek shore, called for a simple design, but the historic ground set hard constraints: older graves along a steep slope had to be protected, the nearby creek accounted for, the existing scatter garden integrated, and room left for a columbarium St. Anne's is still working to install. Brick columns mirroring those at the cemetery entrance now frame the way into a brick plaza ringed with plantings, a raised planter at its center drawing the eye. Historic fence panels were carefully repurposed and restored by the contractor. Flowering trees ring the garden, bringing color and shade while masking traffic noise from Rowe Boulevard. A swath of native plants sweeps along the hillside and melds into the existing scatter garden and the wild plants beyond. When the columbarium arrives it will sit between the native plants and the hill.
WHO TENDS IT
Linda Adamson
Firesoul, Garden of Peace and Remembrance at St. Anne's Cemetery
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Ginger DeLuca
Firesoul, Garden of Peace and Remembrance at St. Anne's Cemetery
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