Memorial Gardens Cemetery - Brainerd, Minnesota

Memorial Gardens cemetery is owned and managed by the Evergreen Cemetery Association of Brainerd.

It is located about 1½ miles north of Brainerd on County Road 3. [ MapQuest Map | Google Map ]

The cemetery occupies 15 acres (out of 25 acres total) with over 2,000 interments.

It was started in 1953 as "Knollwood Memorial Gardens", a privately-owned cemetery selling lots to the public. A February 21, 1967, article in the Brainerd Daily Dispatch reported that the owner, Forrest Sharp, was nowhere to be found, leaving the cemetery bankrupt and the lot owners to fend for themselves. (The Knollwood Memorial Gardens cemetery in Fergus Falls, also owned by Sharp, suffered the same fate.)

The "Crow Wing Memorial Gardens Association" was then formed by the lot owners to manage the cemetery. There were no operating funds, but a small Perpetual Care fund was intact. In 1969, due to their precarious financial situation, they reached an agreement with Evergreen Cemetery Association where Evergreen would take over Memorial Gardens free of any debt or liens. A new state law had to be passed to facilitate this, and by July of 1971, a new board was elected to manage both cemeteries and the cemetery was renamed to just "Memorial Gardens".

The Directory of the Dead (a link to which is in the footer of every page) is the online combined list of burials for both Evergreen Cemetery and the Memorial Gardens cemetery.

For more information on the Association, see the Evergreen Cemetery Association home page (a link to which is also present in the footer of every page).

The autumn of 2012 saw the installation of the first Columbarium at Memorial Gardens, followed by some nice landscaping in the spring. It has 48 niches, each holding one or two urns.

Please contact the office for pricing details.

The statue in the Garden of the Christus was imported when construction of the cemetery began in 1953. It was designed by Domenic Zappia and was sculpted in white marble from Carrara, Italy. It rests on a three-tiered base of sandstone slabs.

Here are some selected summertime and wintertime scenes from the Memorial Gardens cemetery. The photos are © 2008 by Joey Halvorson and are used here with permission.

The first image (summertime and wintertime fading in and out) was inspired by the fabulous picture blog "The Big Picture" and the fade in/out feature that they used in their Earth Hour 2009 exhibit.