Flowers at a Green Burial Ground or Natural Cemetery: What Is Allowed

Green burial has grown from a handful of grounds to hundreds across the country: conservation cemeteries, natural burial sections inside conventional cemeteries, and church and municipal grounds that have set aside a meadow. They share one principle: nothing goes into the ground, or onto it, that will not return to it. That changes what flowers mean there, and we would rather tell you plainly than sell you something the ground will remove.

The usual rules

• No artificial flowers. Silk, plastic and wire do not decompose and are removed on sight at nearly every natural burial ground. This includes the arrangements BloomBridge makes.
• No vases, stakes, containers or wrapping. Anything that stays.
• Fresh, unwrapped flowers are welcome at most, laid directly on the grave. Some ask that they be native or locally grown; some ask that they be left loose, not tied.
• Markers are natural: a flat fieldstone, a native tree or shrub, GPS coordinates in the register, sometimes nothing visible at all.
• Mowing is rare. Meadows are cut once or twice a year; the clean-up calendar that governs conventional cemeteries mostly does not apply.

Every ground writes its own version. Ask for the burial ground's decoration policy before you bring or send anything.

What families do instead

• Fresh flowers from a garden, laid loose on the grave on the visit. They fade into the meadow, which is the point.
• Native seed or a native planting where the ground allows it, often chosen with the cemetery's own list.
• A tree or shrub planted through the ground's memorial program, which many conservation cemeteries offer.
• A stone on the marker, the Jewish custom, entirely at home in a natural burial ground.
• The record. Photos of the grave through the seasons, on a memorial page or a Find a Grave memorial, since the grave itself may become hard to distinguish from the meadow around it.

Finding the grave later

Natural burial grounds map every grave by GPS and keep a register, because the visual cues disappear within a few seasons. Ask the office for the coordinates and keep them with the family's records; a phone finds the spot. Our guide to finding a grave covers conventional cemeteries, where the section-and-lot system does the same job.

Natural sections inside conventional cemeteries

Many cemeteries now have a green burial section beside the traditional lawns. The section follows the natural rules; the rest of the cemetery follows the usual ones. A silk arrangement placed in the green section will be removed even though it would be fine two rows over.