The project is run by a board of trustees operating as a registered Scottish charity via a Memorandum of Understanding with the site owner, St. Andrew’s Church.

Conservation of the Scottish Cemetery aims to improve the environment, built landscape, and the quality of lives of the people connected with it, through optimum use of local and sustainable resources, maintaining an ecological balance, and preserving history and cultural values.

Since the cemetery is surrounded by a neglected urban precinct populated by under-privileged families, the project runs a community development program for the neighbourhood.

The city’s landform contains pockets of rainwater collected within dense, clayey soils; old growth trees, bamboo forests, palm plantations and wetland ecosystems together create the designed and natural landscape.

Although these landforms are disappearing as a result of development pressures, several important ecological sites – such as the Scottish Cemetery – survive as protected spaces within the urban environment.

The city grew and continued to develop around it, but the 3-acre site remained untouched and became a habitat for several indigenous endemic and threatened species which together form a rich biodiversity of microbes, plants and animals along with preserved sections of semi-aquatic grassland and forested ecosystems.

Towns of origin mentioned on the various stones include Paisley, Broughty Ferry, Sutherlandshire, Fife, Campbeltown, and many from Dundee (the latter largely linked to the jute industry).