Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
‘Clean up city cemetery’
Man claims council is being ‘cute’ with tidying grounds
CALLS have been made for cemetery bosses to take better care of a city graveyard.
Kevin Gordon, 43, believes the Western Cemetery is being maintained to a poorer standard than some of the others in the city.
Council bosses say they are allowing overgrowth to encourage biodiversity – but a councillor has called for this to be reviewed.
Kevin was visiting a family plot at the cemetery last week when he noticed older graves were surrounded by overgrowth.
He said: “I’ve got lots of family buried up the back of the site – and the council are being very cute with how they maintain it.
“Down by the front gate there’s an area that has been cut so it looks good from the road but up at the back the grass has been left to grow among the older graves.
“I just think it feels like there’s no respect for the people who are there – it sends a message about how the site will be treated.”
As a privately-owned cemetery, the Western was popular among the wealthy before it was brought into public ownership in 1974.
Among its most famous interments are former lord provosts, marmalade magnate John Keiller, jute barons the Cox Brothers and David Couper Thomson, founder of Tele publisher DC Thomson.
Kevin, who lives in Forfar and works at a car dealership in Dundee, worries that historic graves could be damaged or lost due to poor maintenance.
“You have to drive past all these poorly looked after graves to get to the more modern graves at the very back.
“It’s horrible when you see them,” he added.
“There are jute workers in there, someone involved in the invention of flight (aviation pioneer Preston Watson) – a lot of history that has been left to be overrun.”
Concerns have been raised previously by other locals about the overgrown grass at the cemetery.
Last summer, Dundee City Council said it was trialling a practice of deliberately letting flora grow in areas around older headstones which are less likely to be visited on a day-to-day basis.
However, West End Liberal Democrat councillor Fraser Macpherson says he’s been told that newer plots have been inadvertently affected by the spread of wildflowers.
“Although there are good intentions I think there is a need to have a look again at this and how it is working in practice,” he said.
“The biodiversity idea has been done with the best of intentions – but I don’t want a situation where a grave that is visited by families of those who have recently passed away is caught up in this.”
Dundee City Council did not respond to multiple requests for comment at the time of going to press.