The Friedental cemetery, which is located in the north of Lucerne on a high plateau between the Reuss River and the Rotsee (red lake), has been used as an important inter-denominational place of remembrance since 1885. It was expanded to its current size of seventeen hectares in several steps—up to now without the involvement of landscape architects. A comprehensive park maintenance plan and the ideal plan derived from it present various possibilities for how the contemplative, tranquil character of the cemetery can be reinforced by means of landscape architecture. What stands in the foreground as in the case of every garden monument is preserving and safeguarding the historical substance that remains from the different periods of the cemetery’s creation. Our ideal plan retains the basic spatial structures and structure of paths. The burial grounds have been divided up anew based on the current occupancy rate and soil conditions. In doing so, we have also taken into account the need for contemporary forms of burial.

We have strengthened the character of each of the four areas of the cemetery—the forecourt, core area, eastern area, and valley cemetery—with respect to their historical inventory by means of various tree themes. A row of trees accompanies Friedentalstrasse and leads to the cemetery forecourt, which has become a representative entrance once again as a result of the symmetrical rows of trees and the altered arrangement of the parking spaces. In the core area of the cemetery, relicts of the avenues have been rounded off once again with false cypresses; individually standing cypresses have been planted in a consolidating way as the principle tree on the burial grounds. The characteristic hedges surrounding the burial grounds have been retained. In the eastern area, which was created in the mid-twentieth century, we have interspersed various clouds of trees within the burial grounds in order to provide pleasant shade at meeting places. The valley cemetery is supposed to be developed as a scenic meadow after the rows of graves have been removed. The loosely positioned trees can be leased in the future as tree graves.