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An interview with Donald Boddy - cemetery designer

Q. Why do you design cemeteries?
A. I design to meet the needs of everyone who uses the cemetery - the bereaved,
visitors and the cemetery staff. I believe nature and the environment can play an important part in healing bereavement and cemetery design has to include many different elements to help people at their time of need.

Q. Do you enjoy your work?
A. I enjoy my work; I enjoy working with people, the cemetery staff and the cemetery users. I enjoy designing to meet people’s needs and expectations, researching new ideas and visiting new sites. When you walk in a new wood or field, you try to understand the spirit of the place, to feel if a cemetery would be right in that location, trying to imagine how people would react to the space in their time of need. To me the spirit of the place is critical to the design and to the success of the cemetery.

Q. The spirit of place - how do you find it?
A. You do not find it – it finds you.
My work is to provide signposts for people who may have very diverse ideas and beliefs to enable them to find their own feelings and spirits within a special place.

Q. Do you put up signs to say - this way to find a spirit?
A. By signposts I mean items, which mean something to people, they are personal directions to their memory.
To me the spirit of a place is defined by your own emotions and life experiences. I like to use the phrases – “each to their own understanding” and “to see with the eyes of the heart”
Signposts can include items such as colour and scent, art and sculpture, sounds and music, trees and plants, wildlife, ceremonies and events within the cemetery.

Q. Can you create a spirit of place?
A. People create their own sense of a spirit of a place. I cannot create an environment which creates the same emotional feeling to everyone – we all hear and see in different ways. Each day you visit the cemetery the light and weather will be different, sun shine and bird song can instantly change a location, allowing you to open your mind to a feeling or memory you had long forgotten, at that instant that place becomes very special to you.
You may never see or hear the same combination again but that place will always be special to you. One of the most important elements to be provided for everyone is a sense of security, to enable you to relax and open your mind to your inner senses and to be one with the natural environment.

Q. Why do you call your cemeteries Parks?
A. The word cemetery has become associated in our minds with sadness and in most cases an impersonal and inhospitable place. The word Park possibly has many pictures in your mind and many different emotions and feelings associated with it. Many of these memories may be happy ones from childhood to adulthood.
At times of personal sadness or change in your life you need to draw on these reservoirs of happiness and having drawn on them you also need to recharge them with new memories.

Q. Tell me about Mutumbi Cemetery & Remembrance Park?
A. Mutumbi Cemetery & Remembrance Park will offer people an opportunity to create their own remembrance garden and celebrate the life of their loved ones within gardens and environments reflecting their culture, tradition and beliefs. There will be many paths for all ages and abilities, creating journeys of celebration, exploration, awareness and understanding of the natural environment, cultural and spiritual heritage.