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Autumn 2022
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The first step in turning a historic cemetery into a mushroom growing space was to have the team at Rhyze visit Dalry Cemetery to learn more about the space and its rich history. Once we were able to get a sense for what spaces had not been used for burial purposes and might be used to grow food.
The clear choice was one of the Victorian-era crypt vaults, which were never used for burials due to competing popularity with a neighboring cemetery. With this in mind, the next step was to reach out to the neighboring community and hold public meetings to collectively create a plan for how the space might look.
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Advertisement posters were hung in the areas surrounding the cemetery and posted on Rhyze's social media. In the weeks leading up to the first workshop, I designed a packet to allow participants to learn about different cultivation techniques and draw their own visions for how to use cemetery spaces. The packet contains ecosystem diagrams, lists of locally cultivated plants and fungi, and background information on cemetery history. After that, the packet contains photographs from all of the non-grave structures in the cemetery, encouraging participants to write and draw directly on the packet to demonstrate what it is they'd like to see there.
After the first community design session at Rhyze, the Friends of Dalry held two separate cultivation workshops at the cemetery. In each workshop, I helped coordinate volunteers and provided general assistance as needed. The first workshop was to create the central hanging mushroom growing cage, which the community chose to make in the shape of a coffin. In the second workshop, we built a dozen cultivation containers. All of these would be placed inside the crypt a few weeks before the launch event to give the mushrooms time to fruit.
Over the course of the next few weeks, I worked with the leaders of Rhyze and the FoDC to plan the launch event for the crypt.
On October 30th, 2022 the cemetery crypt was officially open. One of my roles in coordinating this event was bringing foraged foods made from plants gathered in and near the cemetery. At the event I helped to serve a cemetery nettle pesto and answered questions about sustainable harvesting practices, bioaccumulation in cemeteries, and traditional and modern uses of stinging nettle plants.
All in all there were over 70 participants who came to see the crypt and tour the cemetery.
The next steps following the successful launch of the crypt is creating a maintenance plan. The crypt was transformed into a food growing space through a huge amount of effort from organizers and community members alike; in order to keep the space growing, a steady stream of volunteer work will be needed. Rhyze and the Friends of Dalry are planning to tackle a maintenance plan in the new year 2023.
