College of William and Mary Memorial Garden

This garden will provide a dignified, reflective place to memorialize deceased alumni, faculty, staff, their families and friends of the College. It will be a tangible and perpetual witness of a link among the days to knit the generations, each with each, as inscribed on a plaque mounted on the porch of the Wren Building.

A result of our increased mobile society is that home places and related burial locations are less relevant. Memorial Gardens for internment of ashes are opening at a steady rate. Stirred by nostalgia of a special time, College alumni are turning to their Alma Mater for a final homecoming. Facilities for this purpose are found on many campuses. They include Notre Dame, Citadel, Iowa State, Mount St. Mary’s, Duke, North Carolina, Kenyon, Norwich, Williams, Bucknell, Trinity, the Military Academies, and the Universities of Richmond and Virginia. Favorable endorsements have come from the Alumni Association, the Student Alumni Council, President’s Aides and the Olde Guarde Council.

After months of site evaluations and design considerations, the College Design Review Board approved a design created by a noted Landscape Architectural firm with long ties to the College. The plans also were approved by the Virginia Arts and Architectural Review Board. The quiet and contemplative site is a wooded knoll that overlooks Lake Matoaka. It is near, but naturally sheltered from the newly renovated Amphitheater.