Highgate Cemetery 25 Year Masterplan

London | 2021-

Gustafson Porter + Bowman are preparing a new 25-year masterplan for Highgate Cemetery: to secure its future, and to ensure it remains a historic and sustainable, twenty-first century cemetery. Our vision is to deliver a topographical exploration and discovery of both Cemeteries: an ‘experience plan’ that introduces visitors to the inexhaustible wealth of stories held within.

Beginning in the East Cemetery and up towards Highgate Hill, we wish to echo the grid of the surrounding city with new avenues of trees that frame meadows of graves, woodland bosques and mosaics of flowering perennials. When you reach the West Cemetery, the topography becomes steeper, and it is here that we imagine the woodland opening and closing to reveal rays of sunlight that provide unexpected views, hidden graves, and woodland plants. At the top of the hill, within the Circle of Lebanon and above the catacombs, the planting gets more exotic, representing a paradise on earth. This plan will be holistic and bold, designed to shape how people engage with the site and its assets. It will ensure that the primary audience (the dead and bereaved) have the best experience, and that secondary audiences (schools, visitors, tourists) are stimulated and enriched by its stories.

Grid Images © Jo Thompson Landscape & Garden Design