Arboretum

Woodside Cemetery celebrated its 100th anniversary on June 24, 2001. To commemorate this anniversary we added "Arboretum" to our name. This information can be found on a plaque near the front entrance, along with a sign and box containing maps for visitors to pick up.

An arboretum, by Webster's definition, is a place where trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants are cultivated for scientific and educational purposes. The Board of Trustees hopes that the people of the Middletown area will use the arboretum as a resource while teaching the young and old what plants will flourish in our area and to give individuals an idea of what a mature plant would look like if planted in their own back your, thus broadening the plant material used in the local community.

Over 2000 trees and shrubs currently exist in Woodside Cemetery and Arboretum and are identified and placed on our individual burial lot Section maps. The original map of Woodside Cemetery, hanging in the office dates back to 1891. The firm of Earnshaw and Punshon Landscape Engineers of Cincinnati, the same engineers who mapped Spring Grove Cemetery and Arboretum, produced this map of Woodside. All the plant material identified on the original map as deciduous and evergreen plants, if currently available in the nursery trade are found today in Woodside Cemetery and Arboretum.

Some of our older trees include the large Post Oak in back of the office with an aging trumpet vine hanging from its trunk. Believed to be an Ohio Champion, or the largest tree of that specie in Ohio, stands 52 feet tall, 79 feet wide and 13-3/4 feet in circumference We also have the Ginkgo (gingko biloba) tree and the American Elm.

 

Some 75,000 naturalized bulbs bloom in the Spring and 5 to 10 thousand more are added each year, along with an average of 5,000 pansies and 5,000 annuals, all contributing to make Woodside Cemetery and Arboretum a place of beauty for Middletown area citizens.