Atlanta’s oldest public park is also one of its most unusual: Historic Oakland Cemetery, a 48-acre jewel less than a mile from downtown Atlanta. Here you’ll see grand mausoleums and monuments as well as simple and crude headstones, and scan the landscape that holds thousands of unmarked graves.

And while it is the final home for more than 70,000 souls at rest — rich and poor, Jewish and Gentile, locals and immigrants, white and Black — you can also stroll along the paths enjoying the intricate and well-tended gardens, fountains and monuments. Throughout the year, you can enjoy such lively activities as festivals, celebrations, picnics, youth camps, weddings and more.

“It’s a hidden gem, and it’s a hidden garden gem,” says Abra Lee, Director of Horticulture at Oakland Cemetery. “We look at ourselves as one of the great gardens of the world, certainly one of the great gardens of the South.”

Today’s 48-acre cemetery and park began in 1850 as a six-acre public burial ground, originally called City Cemetery. By 1872, it had been expanded to 48 acres with 12 distinct burial grounds, and was renamed Oakland Cemetery in honor of the many oak trees that grew within the boundaries. During the late 19th and early 20th century, families and visitors regularly came to the cemetery to honor the deceased and tend to the decorative gardens they created at individual plots, but also for picnics and other forms of relaxation.

The cemetery went through a period of deterioration from the 1930s until the early 1970s. In 1976, Oakland Cemetery was listed in the National Register of Historic Places. A small group of Atlanta citizens interested in preservation founded non-profit Historic Oakland Cemetery Inc., which took over restoration and maintenance of the cemetery. That organization later became Historic Oakland Foundation.

Historic Oakland also holds lessons on Atlanta’s history. In addition to the Original Six Acres, the cemetery has distinct areas, each with its own unique story: African American Burial Grounds, Jewish Flat and Jewish Hill, Confederate Burial Grounds, East Hill, Greenhouse Valley, Potter’s Field and Belltower Ridge.

Much of the story of each area can be told through the hardscape — the headstones, the walls, the mausoleums, says Cooper Sanchez, a long-time contract gardener who works with the staff to maintain the Oakland gardens. But the finishing touch in each area is in the gardens that are carefully researched, planned out and tended by the knowledgeable staff.

“The headstones are fixed. But the gardens are a new interpretation," Sanchez says. “I think it’s really interesting that we’ve had the interest, the freedom and the support to tell a lot of these stories through the gardens.”

The staff at Oakland Cemetery focuses on three types of preservation and restoration, says Sean Diaz, Operations Manager at Oakland Cemetery: phased projects, family lot improvements and critical restoration.

“African American Grounds, Jewish Grounds, East Hill — that’s a phased project.” The work of restoration is done over an extended period of time. For family lot improvements, "They can come to us, we’ll do the work, we’re normally cheaper, we have the skills. We’re in-house.”

On critical restoration: “Every year, the preservation team walks around the cemetery and looks for hazards to either the public or the monuments themselves,” Diaz says. Headstones that are delaminating or cracking, for instance, are repaired to prevent further damage.