Fake flower displays get the chop at cemetery

MOURNERS visiting Highgate Cemetery have been banned from leaving plastic flowers at the gravesides of friends and relatives.

Managers at the landmark Grade II site say they have received complaints from some visitors, forcing them to enforce old rules to ban the imitation bunches.

One mourner unhappy at the ban is pensioner Joyce Gross, who has taken bunches of artificial chrysanthemums to the grave of her parents in the cemetery for a decade.

Unable to visit the Victorian burial site as often as she once did, the 74-year-old left plastic displays instead of fresh flowers that soon wilt away.

But now a once overlooked rule banning visitors from leaving plastic flowers is being re-enforced by volunteer-led company the Friends of Highgate Cemetery after complaints from other visitors that fake displays were damaging the appearance of the park.

She said: "The last time I went I noticed all the plastic flowers had gone," she said. "When I complained I was told I had no right to the grave as my mother had paid for it originally."

Jean Pateman, chairman of the Friends, responsible for the upkeep of the open space, said the decision to enforce the ban had been taken after complaints from other visitors.

"We have had complaints from people who see the place not just as a burial ground but also a site of metropolitan importance," she said.

Mrs Pateman said posters had been put up warning visitors of the ban.

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