Earth Matters: Green burial in a conservation cemetery

Daily Hampshire Gazette

Imagine your favorite walking path through a quiet forest or a scenic meadow, the songbirds flitting among tall grasses, at rest in the morning dew. Your natural pathway winds past native wildflowers buzzing with pollinators, and rocky ridges reminding you of the passage of geologic time.

This landscape is familiar to you because you visit this site to honor someone who has died and is buried on this land.

This land is conserved by a local land trust and it is also a cemetery—a simple burial ground for bodies and cremated remains memorialized in nature and protected in perpetuity. In this cemetery, there are no upright granite headstones, no chain link or iron fences and no manicured lawns. There are no concrete grave liners or metal burial vaults below ground. Read more >>