Flowers for a Pet's Grave: Pet Cemeteries, Home Burials and What Lasts

Grief for a pet is real grief, and the people who bury a dog or a cat in a pet cemetery tend to visit as faithfully as anyone visits a parent. The graves are smaller, the rules are looser, and the flowers are usually brighter. Here is what works.

Pet cemeteries and how they differ

There are hundreds of pet cemeteries in the United States, from the historic ones like Hartsdale in New York to small grounds attached to veterinary practices and crematories. Compared with human cemeteries they are:

• Smaller, with graves close together and small flat or upright markers, often with a photo.
• More relaxed about decorations. Toys, collars, balls and small figures are common and usually left alone. A few have rules about glass and about items on the grass, for the same mowing reasons as anywhere.
• Less formal about clean-ups, though most still clear before mowing season and around the holidays.
• Personal. Families decorate for birthdays, for Christmas, and for the anniversary of the day the pet died, exactly as they would for a person.

What families place

• Small, bright arrangements. The scale of the grave calls for something compact: a small vase arrangement or a mini saddle on a small upright marker. Bright colors suit the tone; most families do not want somber white for a dog who never sat still.
• The pet's favorite thing, weatherproofed: a ball, a small toy, a tag on the arrangement.
• Seasonal touches. A tiny pumpkin in fall, a small bow at Christmas, a flag if the pet's owner was a veteran and the pet is buried in a veterans' pet section.
• Silk over fresh, for the same reasons as any grave: fresh flowers are gone in days, silk lasts the season.

Pets buried at home

Most pets are buried at home, in the yard, under a tree, by the fence they patrolled. Flowers there are entirely the family's choice and nobody clears them. Families often plant something living, since a home grave has no mowing crew to work around: a rose, a shrub, spring bulbs that come back on the anniversary. A small silk arrangement in a staked vase marks the spot through winter when the plantings are bare.

Cremated pets and memorial gardens

Pet crematories often keep a memorial garden or a wall of small plaques. Flowers go at the plaque or in a communal vase, following the same practical rules as a columbarium niche: small, secured, nothing on the floor or the grass.

Marking the dates

The two dates pet owners keep are the birthday or adoption day, and the day the pet died. Flowers on those days, a photo of the grave, and a note in the family's own record are the whole ritual, and it is not a small one for the people who keep it.