In 1996, six native Red Cedar trees were planted with great ceremony in the Heart of the Park. The next year, volunteers planted 60 more. The idea of the memorial Cedar Grove was to honor people by allowing their loved ones to purchase a tree. Each tree represented the honoring or memorial of a cherished individual in the donors’ life.
The plantings were laid out on a double spiral from the center, the heart, one quarter-turn apart. Students and faculty from Dunwoody Institute helped with the engineering. The late nursuryman Clark Batho, a friend of Cedar Lake Park supplied the trees, and dug the holes.
Young people from Hennepin County Sentence to Serve passed many hours of community service time laying a deep 5-feet wide corridor of wood chips along the spiral lines. This allows for an easier walk.
The spirals of the Cedar Grove are visible from the air. Also, there are lines that can be seen that represent the solstice sunrise/sunset, and the cardinal points. These comprise the henge, or astronomical calendar, that has been created in the grove.
All are in alignment from the center, the Heart of the Park. There are GPS coordinates going out 40 miles, bringing these spirals east into Wisconsin, north through Anoka, west to Cokato, and south into Lakeville. In the photo above, notice that the grove happens to be in the center of a pyramid. These lines were service roads when BNSF railroad used the land as a maintenance and switching yard. Now, these gravel paths are part of the secondary circulation in the park.
