The Rotary Club of Sale recently helped create a new garden adjacent to the children’s area at Sale Cemetery, with volunteers from both organisations carrying out the work.
Rotary contributed to the garden and seating area with funds raised through the Race the Rubeena challenge.
The garden was designed by landscape gardener Liz Filmer and features native plantings such as callistemon, hardenbergia, kangaroo paw and pennisetum grasses. A white pandora vine will climb over a central arch framing a bench seat.
The garden has a slatted eucifence made from durable eucaluypt timber behind the seating and provides a reflective rest area for visitors.
Volunteers from Rotary, the Sale Cemetery Trust and the Trust’s Friends Gardening group did the planting and continue to maintain the garden.
Trust chairman Pauline Hitchins said the trust was grateful for Rotary’s support for the garden which was a welcome addition to a special corner of the lawn, creating a peaceful place for visiting families and a focal point for the area.
The funding has also enabled another children’s memorial area to be upgraded.
In the 1950s and 1960s many stillborn babies were buried in unmarked graves along the eastern boundary of the old cemetery. Although there is a record of burials, most were buried with several other babies in the same grave so it is difficult to mark the grave.
A nearby garden provides the opportunity for families to record the babies on a small plaque.
The trust has several more projects in the pipeline including a new ashes wall and garden at the north of the lawn cemetery, and additional options for ashes around the billabong where the garden has been upgraded through numerous working bees by the Friends group. These are held on the first Thursday of each month.
The trust encourages visitors, walkers and family groups to the cemetery which it sees as an additional green space for locals.
The cemetery also assists many people searching for ancestors buried at Sale. The office is open Monday to Friday 9am to 1pm, and can be emailed at info@salecemetery.com.au
