Conifers and commemoration — the politics and protocol of planting

Abstract

This study examines the symbolic role of trees, shrubs and flowers on 20th century battle grounds and military cemeteries. By focusing on the imagery of commemoration and on the power of horticultural symbols the paper explores the emergence of an iconography during wartime and its perpetuation in ritualized peacetime landscapes. The paper makes specific reference to the Western Front in France and Belgium, and to the consecrated ground of the Dardanelles peninsula — a commemorative terrain that is being altered by Turkish planting and memorial schemes that are bringing into sharp focus the problems of maintaining Christian burial grounds in perpetuity across the globe. The paper concludes by asking whether tree planting may have replaced memorial building in the rhetoric and culture of commemoration.

Key Words:

• war memorials
• commemorative planting
• Commonwealth War Graves Commission