The Necropolis - Glasgow's great silent 'City of the Dead' contains over 50,000 burials, it is well known for the grand memorials to the richer residents of the city, built from 1836 onwards. Less well known is that the cemetery contains 21,000 common or unmarked graves, where people were buried as their families or friends could not afford the price of a headstone or lair.

The Necropolis is split up into compartments named after the Greek alphabet, one named Eta, a small unassuming triangle of grass, contains 8,000 common burials.

In September 2024, 230 participants helped to plant thousands of bulbs which will become a living memorial to those buried in the 21,000 common or unmarked graves in the Eta Compartment. The event was part of Glasgow Doors Open Days Festival.

Thanks to our partners Scouse Flowerhouse, musicians Sequoia and Fiona Hunter whose performances accompanied the planting, Ruby Flowers, who produced the beautiful flower sculpture live on site, and Michael Matar and Gerrie and Susan Douglas-Scott for their poignant words. Special thanks also to Mercedes Richardson and her students at Glasgow Clyde College English as a Second Language course, who wrote a poem about their experiences as New Glaswegians, which was recited live at the event by Mohammed Ibrahim, Musab Kater and Abdulhameed Afte.

We closed the event with shared food cooked by students from the college and Ibrahim Alissi, from Kitchen Glasgow, using potatoes grown by young unaccompanied asylum seekers and refugees from Anniesland College.

The flower memorial will remember and celebrate the lives of those who lived, worked, and died in Glasgow at a time of great change, irrespective of wealth or status.

The Glasgow Necropolis Flower Memorial is a partnership between Aproxima Arts, Scouse Flowerhouse and the National Wildflower Centre. Glasgow Requiem and the establishment of a permanent Glasgow Necropolis Flower Memorial has been made possible through the kind support of: