Flowers for a Grandparent's Grave: Choosing for Grandma and Grandpa

A grandparent's grave is usually the first grave a person tends on their own. The parents who used to make the trip get older, or pass themselves, and the grandchildren find that the cemetery in the old hometown is now theirs to remember. It is often hundreds of miles away and they have not been since they were small.

Choosing for a grandmother

• Her garden flowers. Grandmothers of a certain generation grew things: roses, peonies, hydrangeas, gladiolus, zinnias. If you remember what grew by her porch, that is the arrangement.
• Purple and lavender. Traditionally the colors of dignity and admiration, and very often the colors a grandmother favored. Purple arrangements are a common choice for exactly that reason.
• Pink and white roses, the Mother's Day pairing, which serves for grandmothers too.
• Something old-fashioned: carnations, lilies of the valley, sweet peas. Flowers that were in her wedding bouquet, if there is a photo.

Choosing for a grandfather

• Sunflowers, the flower most families choose for fathers and grandfathers who worked outside or loved the garden.
• Red, white and blue if he served, which a large share of that generation did. Memorial Day and Veterans Day are natural dates. Our guide to flowers at a veteran's grave covers national cemetery rules.
• Deep reds and golds: roses, mums, marigolds in strong colors.
• Something from his life, wired into the arrangement: a fishing lure, a small tool, a team ribbon.

When they share a stone

Grandparents are usually buried together under one double headstone, often with both names carved while one was still living. One arrangement serves both, placed in the center; a saddle across the top of a double stone is the classic choice. Some families place two smaller arrangements, one at each name, on the anniversary of each death.

Finding a grave you last saw as a child

Memory of a cemetery visited at age eight does not help much. Start with the cemetery name from a parent or an obituary, search Find a Grave for the memorial and its headstone photo, and ask the cemetery office for the section and lot. Our guide to finding a grave walks through it. Once found, add the plot to the Find a Grave memorial so the next grandchild does not have to search.

Sharing the care across the family

Grandparents' graves have many descendants and no clear owner. Cousins in four states each assume someone else is tending it, and nobody is. The families that solve this usually do it one of two ways: one grandchild takes it on and the others chip in, or the cousins split the year, one taking the birthday, one the holidays, one Memorial Day. A shared memorial page with the delivery photos lets everyone see that it is being done.

The dates grandchildren keep

Birthdays and Christmas, most often. Grandparents are associated with holidays in a way parents sometimes are not: the house everyone went to, the table everyone sat at. A holiday arrangement at the grave in December, and flowers on the birthday, are the two deliveries grandchildren most often set up, and the two that most often continue for decades.