This is the weekend that we are going to visit our dead and flower their graves in the cemetery for All Saints’ Day. In Aix-les-Bains, the weeks preceding the religious festival are busy: everything must be perfect for the weekend.
Hose in hand, Moustafa cleans the tombstones he is responsible for taking care of with bleach. “I’m clearing almost 800 graves before this weekend“, he explains. For the municipality, it is also necessary weed, renew the gravel on each path, trim the hedges, and obviously, to bloom Cemetery.
Marine is a gardener for the city of Aix-les-Bains: “We have five to six different flower varieties, we have to measure the distance between each flower so that everything is clean and aligned in the cemetery.”
“A long term job”
To make a cemetery bloom on All Saints’ Day, everything must be organized several months in advance, according to Gérard Vera, head of the parks and gardens department at the city of Aix-les-Bains: “On the cemetery, there are 60 chrysanthemums and 2000 biennial plants. It’s a long-term job and a culture that we anticipate in advance.“
We start growing chrysanthemums in March, then they bloom when the days are short. For biennial plants – pansies, daisies, forget-me-nots – sowing is done in July for flowering on All Saints’ Day.
The Aix-les-Bains municipal cemetery has approximately 5,000 graves. This maintenance work is essential for Renaud Beretti, the mayor: “The people of Aix are very attached to the cemetery being clean, flowery and repainted, all year round and especially for All Saints’ Day, the most important period of the cemetery.”