Tony Gliot remembers looking around at the Salt Lake City Cemetery a little over four years ago and thinking about the vision that its longtime sexton, Mark Smith, had for the place.
Smith, who died in 2019, often referred to the 120-acre property as a place “for the living,” offering peace and comfort to families and friends who visit their departed loved ones, while also serving as a key habitat for wildlife that call the cemetery home. As the city honored Smith by naming the cemetery’s new arboretum after him in 2021, Gliot, Salt Lake City’s urban forester, wanted to expand life across the country’s largest municipally-owned graveyard.
“On that day, I recall sharing a wish or a hope that the arboretum we were opening was going to grow, and — with the help of the people of Salt Lake City — become an enduring symbol of our city’s love and appreciation for trees,” he said.
Four years later, that wish has come true. Gliot joined city leaders and a few dozen volunteers in planting 30 new trees across the cemetery on Saturday. In doing so, they completed a full restoration of the 250 trees that were lost during a strong windstorm in 2020.
The new trees scattered around the more than 130,000 burial sites benefit what Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall refers to as the city’s “quiet majority,” and the people who come to visit them.
“It’s important that we give them voices, and that we maintain this space in a respectful manner,” she said, before assisting in the tree planting work. “I think this is one of the most — if not the most — sacred spaces in Salt Lake City.”
Work to repair the cemetery began not long after the downslope winds wreaked havoc in September 2020, bringing wind gusts of up to 112 mph.
The trees toppled at the cemetery represented a large chunk of the 1,500 city-owned trees damaged or destroyed by the event. Some of the trees that fell over were more than a century old, and one of them had a 49-inch trunk diameter, the mayor pointed out. They damaged roads, curbs and sidewalks as they fell over, forcing the cemetery to close for several months for repairs.
Those initial repairs included the planting of some trees, while more trees have been planted in bunches over the past few years.
“This 30 gets us over, so we actually have more trees in the cemetery now than we did prior to the windstorm,” Gliot adds.
Ten different tree species were planted on Saturday, continuing the arboretum’s mission to provide plant diversity. More than 30 different species have been planted over the past five years, contributing to the more than 100 species found within the thousands of plants and trees at the cemetery, he told KSL.com.
All of it helps beautify the space, but it also benefits the many wildlife species that reside in the cemetery. The 120-acre property essentially blends the Avenues neighborhood and the city’s foothills together, making it a unique place to view everything from deer herds to raptor nests.
Gliot expects that the city will continue to plant trees at the cemetery, especially since drought and other factors can also lead to tree damage and loss. The city, he said, is also close to rolling out a new program where people can donate to new trees planted in memory of loved ones.
“To see (the arboretum) come into fruition and be this place that will endure, it’s a great thing for the city,” Gliot said, referring back to Smith’s vision for the land.
The restoration of the cemetery trees helps the city expand its urban forest, too, which has been a city priority in recent years.
While the city has now planted more than 250 new trees at the cemetery since 2020, it has also planted more than 8,000 new trees citywide. That’s expected to continue, with another 1,000 trees next year, according to Mendenhall.