Natural Death Centre has info on natural burial grounds (embalming not allowed) along with places to find natural caskets made from willow, bamboo or seagrass, and info on home and sea burials. Also read how to help someone who is grieving, and how to cope with companion animals die.
Avoid sending plantable memorial cards with pets, as many flowers (including lilies are toxic. Also know memorial trees to avoid near horses (yew, oak). Instead, consider donating to Trees for Life, which rewilds the Highlands. You can’t ‘name your tree’ but it does more good.
Capsula Mundi is a new invention from Italians, to replace the traditional urn. You not only go back to the ground, but have a tree planted on top of you too! The idea is to use our dead bodes to reforest the world. Sounds good!
the unique stories & glories of graveyards
A Tomb with a View is a unique book that is not as ghoulish as it sounds. Winner of the Scottish Non-fiction book of the year, Peter takes us on a tour of graveyards, visiting the country’s best burial grounds. So push open the rusting gate, push back the ivy and take a look inside…
A considered and moving book on the timely subject of how the dead are remembered, and how they go on working below the surface of our lives. Hilary Mantel
Ross makes a likely idiosyncratic guide, and one finishes the book, feeling strangely optimistic about the inevitable. The Observer
Never has a book about death, been so full of life. James Joyce and Charles Dickens would’ve loved it. It also reveals Peter Ross to be among the best non-fiction writers in the country. Andrew O’Hagan
The Natural Death Centre is a charity supported by a board of trustees, which runs an independent funeral service, alongside the Association of Natural Burial Grounds (there are 270 nationwide). The charity was founded by a free-spirited couple in 1991 (he helped to set up Neal’s Yard Remedies with his friend, before dying in a car crash age just 52) and today the charity is run by a keen naturalist who won award for the best natural burial ground in the UK’. This organisation which relies on donations and sales of its Natural Death Handbook (which you can often find in libraries and covers a directory of burial grounds and progressive funeral directors, alongside suppliers of green coffins & urns)) to offer impartial expert advice for anyone interested in a more natural death.
You don’t legally have to use a funeral director, though most people prefer to use one at a time of grief. The middle-ground is to find a simple funeral director recommended by The Natural Death Centre, which is run as a nonprofit social enterprise (so they offer flexible services rather than ‘packages’ and don’t try to force embalming bodies on the relatives or friends). Green coffin and urn makers are usually quite happy to sell direct, cutting out middlemen profits of funeral directors.
The government’s funeral expenses payment is available for people on certain benefits, paid directly into your bank account. This is to help cover the cost of moving the body, burial & cremation fees (including the ‘ash cash’ GP certificate) and up to £1000 for other expenses like flowers, coffins and funeral director fees. Note that there is no law to say that bodies have to be embalmed (a very toxic procedure anyway). Reputable funeral directors should have a cold room (if not, ask why or choose another company).
