As Invasive Vines Threaten to Strangle Our Trees, Volunteers Are Fighting Them Back

Image via The 51st

It’s easy to miss Woodlawn Cemetery. Its gates are slightly tucked into the side of Benning Road, surrounded by a few trees that obscure the entrance. It’s also been closed to the public for over 50 years, so most people aren’t looking for it to begin with.

Meredith Prescott certainly wasn’t. She had entered a forest alongside Texas Avenue and stumbled onto the site while taking a walk in January.  Prescott didn’t realize what she had found until she saw headstones at the bottom of the hill that Woodlawn Cemetery rests on. “I go into this open field, and I was like, ‘Oh my god — this is a cemetery,’” she recalls. 

That’s when Prescott ran into Tyrone Carter, a volunteer who has been tending to the cemetery for over a decade, who politely told her the property was not open to visitors.