Respectful Care for a Historic Cemetery: A Landscaping Case Study on Parklawn Memorial Park and Menorah Gardens

A wooded cemetery with twittering birds and the occasional roaming fox is an oasis of serenity in the midst of the busy Rockville/Bethesda Maryland corridor.
 
It’s also a sacred, special place, needing an extra level of sensitivity and respect when it comes to landscape maintenance.

“We’re looking for clean, precise work, making sure there aren’t clumps of grass left behind or debris on the markers,” says Chris Piscitelli, general manager at Parklawn. “We don’t want sharp, hard mower turns that tear up the grass. 

“If it were your mother or father here, or your grandmother or grandfather, you’d want their place to be treated with respect.”

Piscitelli chose to partner with Level Green Landscaping in March 2024 for Parklawn’s cemetery landscape maintenance needs. 

Dave Briggs, the Level Green account manager who works with Parklawn, walks us through what it takes to care for the 64-acre parklike site. Piscitelli shares the details that are important to him. 

Welcome to Peaceful Parklawn 

Parklawn Memorial Park and Menorah Gardens is located six miles from Washington, D.C., in Montgomery County, Maryland.

The entrance, on Veirs Mill Road in Rockville, follows a half-mile drive through Rock Creek Park across quaint stone bridges. The county park is a buffer of serene nature, surrounding the cemetery on three sides. Deer, fox and birds add to the park-like setting.

Established in 1951, the cemetery has close to 50,000 grave sites, Piscitelli says, most featuring plaques that are flush with the ground, with about one quarter of the grave sites with traditional raised headstones. 

It’s a unique and challenging property for landscape maintenance. 

Weekly Cemetery Landscape Maintenance Keeps Things Tidy

Level Green crews visit weekly for mowing and blowing, weeding and trimming. 

Crews keep an eye out for weeds, faded flowers, dead tree branches or signs of any plant disease or pest damage. 

Navigating around the massive number of headstones and plaques that come with cemetery landscape maintenance is a big challenge, Briggs says. 

“The biggest challenge is edging all the markers once a month,” Briggs says. “It takes two crews two days to do it.” It’s a painstaking task for crews, who carefully clear all weeds, stray grass and bits of debris so the headstones look neat and clean, without damaging them. 

“We’ve had the same crew since we started,” Briggs says, “and they’ve really got it down, in terms of the order they do things and trimming around all the headstones.”

“They do a better job than our previous company in edging the markers,” Piscitelli notes. 

Cemetery Landscape Maintenance and Respectful Timing 

All this maintenance has to happen without interfering with cemetery visitors and burial ceremonies, Briggs says, and timing is important on several levels.

“They want landscaping services done before the end of the week, so it looks nice when families come out on the weekends,” Briggs says. 

Crews do cemetery landscape maintenance tasks around the site’s office early in the morning before visitors arrive. 

“If there’s a burial going on, we work in other areas until it’s finished, so they don’t hear any noise or see our crew people,” Briggs says. “There were quite a few visits where we had to change our original plan to accommodate that.”

“When people come out here, they want to be a in a serene, peaceful place to visit their loved ones,” Piscitelli says, “and Level Green is respectful of that.”

Proactivity Catches Cemetery Landscape Issues Early

Briggs and Level Green crew members strive to spot issues before they become problems, from dead or dying branches that could tumble down to plant diseases or insects that can spread and damage landscaping. 

“I always tell property managers, ‘I’m here to make your life easier so you don’t have to worry about your landscaping,’” Briggs says. “I’ll notice any problems, I’ll bring them new ideas.”

One great example: mowing crews carry grass seed on board.

“We have big mowers with all this power and making the tight turns we have to make on this site can sometimes pull up the grass,” Briggs says. Crews carry grass seed with them so they can immediately repair any bare areas. 

The Importance of Well-Maintained Equipment 

Piscitelli is a stickler about turf maintenance. He’s been in the grounds maintenance business for 40 years, and has a degree in the field from the University of Maryland.

“This isn’t my first rodeo with turf,” he says. 

Proper mowing equipment is crucial, he says, and he’s impressed with Level Green’s.

“Their mowers seem to be better maintained than the last landscaping company we used, they’re driven at appropriate speeds and the levels are set equally,” he says. “If you have a mower with a dull blade or mowers that aren’t all set at the same level, or that are being driven too fast, it shows. Proper maintenance of machines goes a long way.”

Tending to Magnificent Trees in the Graveyard Landscape 

The verdant property features old oaks, maples, beech, walnut, cedar and other trees, as well as a variety of shrubs. 

Some of the stately oak trees pre-date George Washington.

“The site is so old, there are old trees that had died that we needed to take down,”
Briggs says. About a dozen trees were removed, which is painstaking work, safely navigating big cranes through the cemetery landscaping without causing any damage to surrounding grave sites. 

Briggs combined some of the tree removals to get a better price for the cemetery.

All those majestic mature trees mean massive piles of fallen leaves. 

Crews do three leaf removal visits each year — one before Halloween, one before Thanksgiving, and one before Christmas.

Lawn Care Restrictions: A Challenge for Cemetery Landscaping 

Parklawn is located in Montgomery County, where the city council passed a measure that bans the use of certain pesticides, including widely used products that control weeds, insects, and diseases.

That means Level Green crews can’t use crabgrass pre-emergent and selective broadleaf weed control, both standards in comprehensive turf care.

Briggs has recommended the cemetery add aeration to its lawn maintenance to help make up for the reduced weed control. Aeration uses a machine to pull out tiny cores of soil from the lawn, allowing water and oxygen to get to the roots, so they can grow nice and deep.

That’s followed by overseeding, as the holes created are perfect new homes for grass seed.

Shrub Care for Graveyard Landscape Maintenance 

Classic boxwood hedges surround larger Parklawn family plots designed for groups of grave sites. Regular shearing keeps them looking neat and tidy, and when Briggs notices a shrub that’s dying, he recommends replacement to keep the hedges consistent.

Annual Flowers Brighten Cemetery Landscaping 

When Briggs first visited Parklawn in March 2024 to take over the new account, he noticed the pansies planted by the previous landscaping company were faded and dying. 

“They looked really bad,” he says. 

Briggs immediately recommended a new batch of fresh annuals be planted to brighten up the entrance and office areas. 

Parklawn gets two rotations of annual flowers as part of its cemetery landscape maintenance contract, one in spring to last through the summer and a second batch in the fall. 

Crews install about 500 bright annuals, planting them in beds at the cemetery entrance and at the office.

Vinca were the stars of the summer flower show. The sturdy annuals work well
in properties like Parklawn that don’t have irrigation systems. The cemetery grounds staff water them as needed. 

Briggs chose cheerful violas for the fall installation.

“They last longer and look better through the winter than the pansies they had before,” he says.

Another important addition: deer netting to protect the tasty flowers from the many deer that wander through the wooded site. 

“The last contractor didn’t install deer netting, so many of the pansies were eaten,” Briggs says. 

Communication Leads to Action 

“Dave is responsive,” Piscitelli says. “He always gets back to me.”

He and Briggs walk the site together a couple times a year to spot and talk through any issues that need attention. 

“We’re always making improvements,” Piscitelli says. “Dave took out some trees for me and added some bushes to replace some that were declining. 

“There are always some growing pains to work through at the beginning with a new landscaping company, but everything’s been going well,” Piscitelli says. “Level Green is always responsive to what we’re asking.”

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