The things that make it beautiful also make the Natchez City Cemetery more complicated to maintain &045; rolling hills, old brick walls and steps, elaborate monuments and statuary, towering plants and iron fencing susceptible to rust and decay.

Funds are limited, said Sarabeth Rountree, president of the Cemetery Association. Volunteers take on some of the work &045; Boy Scouts clean monuments; gardening enthusiasts care for old roses and camellias; and students, such as a group on Tuesday from Trinity Episcopal Day School, paint fences.

&uot;The students have a good time doing this,&uot; Rountree said, as she watched the group apply the black paint to the decorative iron. &uot;And it certainly helps out the cemetery. The fence they’re painting is at a place that will be featured on the program in October.&uot;

She referred to &uot;Angels on the Bluff,&uot; a fund raiser sponsored by Friends of the Cemetery that helps to provide money for beautification at the cemetery each fall and features amateur actors who portray some of the characters buried there.

With an eye to furthering day-to-day beauty of the cemetery, the association has written a new set of rules, &uot;Cemetery Etiquette.&uot;

Estes said the rules will benefit grounds workers in two ways &045; making their daily mowing and weeding easier and making it safer.

&uot;Now there seems to be a preponderance of things people are putting around the monuments,&uot; Estes said. &uot;People need to keep it simple to keep it beautiful.&uot;

And to keep it safe for workers, who are endangered by something so ordinary as the wire used to hold artificial flowers in place. &uot;Wires become like bullets when they get caught in the lawnmower. They could hurt the worker and hurt the lawnmower, too.&uot;

The wires become problems when flowers are placed on the ground and not in an urn or vase on the monument.

Ground rules set by the new etiquette list should help to minimize many problems of maintenance and to enhance the cemetery’s beauty by establishing consistency throughout, Estes said.

Densely populated by the remains of many generations, the City Cemetery, established in 1822,

stretches across 100 acres of rolling hills.

Perhaps most beautiful in spring, lush in new green, the cemetery elicits compliments from all who visit, Estes said.

&uot;I get comments from people all the time. They tell me it’s the most beautiful cemetery they’ve ever seen and they ask how we keep it so beautiful,&uot; he said. In the summer, up to 14 men work daily to mow, weed and edge.

&uot;People don’t realize how large an area we have to keep,&uot; Estes said. &uot;Setting new ground rules will help us to keep it beautiful.&uot;