Lakewood Foundation Projects
Through the Lakewood Foundation, donor support helps steward Lakewood’s natural landscape, historic structures, and public spaces, ensuring this cherished community resource can be preserved, restored, and enjoyed for generations to come.
Thanks to the generosity of Lakewood Foundation supporters, Lakewood is able to undertake meaningful preservation and enhancement projects across the cemetery. The initiatives highlighted below reflect ongoing investments in caring for this historic and cultural landscape while strengthening its value as a place of remembrance, reflection, and community connection.
Volunteer Program
Launched in 2022, our Welcome Team has grown from 21 volunteers to 75 dedicated members in 2026. This extraordinary team helps make Lakewood’s events more welcoming, engaging and meaningful.
Now nearing its fifth year, this team supported a wide range of programs in 2025, from Music in the Chapel concerts to events that explore and support themes of grief, remembrance and end-of-life. Additionally, volunteers made a big impact at our community events like our Lantern Lighting Celebration, Memorial Day and Fall Colors.
This year brought a new and meaningful opportunity, Reception Greeters. These members of the Welcome Team supported families at funeral receptions and celebrations of life by greeting guests at the Garden Mausoleum, offering kind and respectful assistance to families.
Beyond events, volunteers contributed countless behind-the-scenes hours, creating 2,000 lantern sleeves for the Lantern Lighting Celebration and participating in ongoing training to deepen their knowledge and presence as Lakewood ambassadors.
Artist in Residence
In 2026, thanks to the generous support of the Lakewood Heritage Foundation, we welcomed our second Artist in Residence cohort. This year’s group amazed us with their creativity, finding new ways to explore themes of grief, memory and healing.
The Lakewood Artist in Residence program invites local artists to explore themes of remembrance, grief, healing, nature, and community through original creative work inspired by Lakewood’s historic landscape and cultural significance. Through exhibitions, performances, workshops, and participatory experiences, the program offers visitors new ways to connect with Lakewood and engage with the universal experiences of memory and reflection.
Resident artists have brought these themes to life through a variety of mediums, including handmade paper created from repurposed funeral flowers by Diana Eicher, community singing experiences led by Sarah M. Greer, paintings and essays by Andrew Grum Carr, and photographic works by RJ Kern exploring memory, place, and impermanence. Recent residencies by Cándida González and Alyssa Rose Gregory continue to expand the program’s impact, inviting visitors to engage with grief, healing, and the natural world through creative expression.
Spring Tulips and Welcome Gardens
Support from the Lakewood Heritage Foundation helps make large-scale seasonal plantings possible, including the 50,000 tulip bulbs that bloom across Lakewood each spring. These colorful displays enhance the visitor experience while contributing to the ongoing stewardship of Lakewood’s beautiful grounds
Rooted in Lakewood’s historic commitment to horticulture and landscape stewardship, seasonal tulip plantings bring thousands of blooms to the grounds each spring. Support from the Heritage Foundation helps make these large-scale displays possible, enhancing the Welcome Garden as a vibrant gathering space and backdrop for popular community events such as Tulip Week and Tea with Tulips. These seasonal displays enrich the visitor experience while celebrating the natural beauty that has defined Lakewood for more than a century.
Tree Planting
Thanks to the sponsorship of the Lakewood Heritage Foundation, 600 new trees have been planted in the last 4 years, 162 trees were planted in 2025.
Lakewood, an accredited Level 2 arboretum and among the largest in the state, uses a forward-thinking blueprint in planning for our tree canopy and landscape. Our decisions are informed by science and rooted in a deep respect for this place and what Lakewood means to the community.
Lakewood prioritizes native trees and historically-inspired shrubs. Compared to non-native species, native plants support more insects, which in turn support more birds and wildlife.
We plant tree varieties well-researched to do well in Minnesota’s changing climate. Specifically, our climate-smart strategy includes tulip poplars, yellowwood, bald cypress and certain kinds of hickory. These are all trees that until recently were only found further south.
Lakewood is increasing the representation of evergreens, such as white pine, white spruce, Norway spruce and eastern hemlock. This last variety has a special place in the memories of some Lakewood staff and visitors because the “Champion” hemlock, recognized as the largest of its kind within the state, once grew in Seneca 46.
Our newly planted trees, along with their long-lived neighbors, provide shade, cool the local environment, sequester carbon, reduce noise, help manage stormwater and provide habitat to wildlife.