The city of Kamloops wants to add an arboretum – or tree museum – at the Old Men’s Provincial Cemetery on Sixth Avenue, south of Columbia Street.

According to the city, the cemetery was used to bury early settlers and immigrants who came to the Kamloops area to work in the mining and railway industries,  often without family.

Parks Manager Jeff Putnam says the idea is to plant trees that are native to the Kamloops area., but he says crews are also considering planting trees native to the countries where those early settlers came from.

“What we want to do is celebrate the fact that those people have been buried there. What we’re going do to is identify the exact location of the graves and then kind of build the tree museum around them,” Putnam said.

“It’s not only going to have an environmental benefit of adding more trees, but its also going to have a social and historical benefit so people can understand why that cemetery existed.”

Putnam says the plan is to phase in the arboretum over two to four years, using existing city budgets. There will also be signs to educate the public, pathways, and possibly even benches and a gazebo at the 1.6 hectare green space in the Sagebrush neighbourhood.

“It really gives us an opportunity to showcase many different tree species that are indigenous to the area, and some that are not,” Putnam said. “People have taken for granted the value of trees and the benefits they provide in urban environments.”

“It’s something that our city council is really keen on focusing on and we’re excited to do that.”

Putnam says this year there will be radar work done at the site, so staff can identify where some of these unmarked graves are located to plant trees around it.

When complete, he says this project will have a broad range of benefits to our community including social, educational, environmental and tourism opportunities.