Julia Bina of Minnesota uses a machete to cut a large vine wrapped around a tree in Evergreen Cemetery. Ms. Bina leads a group of nine young people with the AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps who have been working since Thanksgiving to help clear vegetation and overgrowth from the historic cemetery. Photo by Jeremy Lazarus
Drive into historic Evergreen and East End cemeteries, and it is immediately evident that the 12 years of restoration work is paying off.
The vines, weeds and other overgrowth is gone from large areas of the neighboring African-American cemeteries that date to the 1890s.
Instead of the mowed lawn look of modern cemeteries, these are more naturalistic places, with the headstones and marked graves â some elaborate and others modest â clearly visible and large, open pathways.