Reading Old Cemetery and Newbury Newtown Road are two early examples of Victorian garden cemeteries set up in Berkshire before 1850. We consider them as sister cemeteries, not only as they are located in the same county, had similar priorities around public health and civic pride when they were setup but also share connections in terms of families or individuals buried in their sites. Both have active special interest volunteer groups and organise regular community engagement events. The activities aim to balance the conflicting, at times, agendas of conservation and heritage and attract a wide audience, especially families. There is a strong element of performativity and embodied interactions in some of the activities. Through theatrical performances, role play opportunities, interactive tasks, participants and organisers construct and assign meaning to the landscape and its monuments. Active engagement with the materiality of the past offers a platform to engage in discussions around nature, local history, funerary art, memorialisation as interwoven themes. As a result, through the imagined and the performed links with the present are being forged highlighting the significance of preserving the cemeteries as important community resources is raised. Drawing on our experiences and reviews of cemetery research, our paper aims to share an emerging public engagement framework through performativity that informs and is informed by the activities of the two cemetery groups.