Memorial gardens
Memorial gardens are areas planted for a specific purpose. That purpose is to remember someone or something special. Memorial gardens are usually planted in memory of people who have passed away. The garden is planted as a tribute to the life or lives that were lost.
A memorial garden can be in a private garden or in a public one such as the Parque de la Paz (Park of Peace) or the Parc Roques Blanques, both in Spain. Bios Urn Australian gardens are starting to become available also.
They tend to offer different alternatives: from the burial of a tomb or an urn to family plots, all in a natural environment as opposed to a traditional cemetary.
They are gardens that are nice to walk around and be in, whethere you are visiting a loved-one or not.
Natural burial grounds
Close to nature, simple and comforting, more and more organizations offer burials in the forest as an alternative to the traditional cemetery.
Graves are identified by colored bands tied around the trees. In the middle of the forest, Most often, the ashes of the dead rest in biodegradable urns at the roots of trees like at Arbres de Memoire in France as seen above.
Grave decorations are often not allowed in natural burial grounds such as Fried Wald or Trauer Waldoase both located in Germany, because arrangements, candles and tombstones do not fit into the natural environment of the forest. They are replaced by moss, ferns, wildflowers, colorful leaves and snow, which adorn the tree´s roots according to the season and make them individual places of remembrance. Nature takes over.
Unique in Europe, the Memory Grove at Ad Medirraneum in Spain offers the possibility to bury an urn under an always-green orange tree, embedded in a wonderful scenery.
Planted placenta a growing business
The thought may make some feel squeamish, but for others it could provide a way to turn a disused body organ into something more special and lasting.
Fly-in, fly-out sparky Bryce Roberts has set up a business which hopes to capture demand from Australia's new mums who are looking to do something with their nutrient-rich placentas.
He is providing biodegradable capsules which enable mums to use their placentas, along with a chosen seedling, to grow celebration trees without the risk of interference by pets or animals.
The concept is a spin-off from a business he started in 2016 called Tree of Memories, distributing the biodegradable Australia Bios Urn capsules, enabling people to create a living memory of a loved person or pet by using their ashes to grow a tree.
More recently, Mr Roberts said he found there was also demand to use the capsules at the start of life, so he has started a sideline business to grow a celebration of life tree.
Planting placentas has been a tradition in many cultures, and is gaining momentum in the Western world. The Maori traditionally bury placentas on tribal land, which is said to help the child to establish a personal and spiritual connection to the land.
The Native American Navajo, bury placentas to ensure children always return home, and in Bali the placenta is believed to be the physical body of the child’s guardian angel, so is treated with the utmost respect
“People have been doing this for many years already, but there has always been a threat of pets digging the placenta up as home land lot sizes have increasingly become smaller,” he said.
The biodegradable capsule, which costs $189 and is planted in the ground or a big pot, is made by a Spanish company and has two sections. The upper section contains an organic growth medium, where a chosen seedling is planted. The lower section houses the placenta, safely encapsulated to protect it from the environment and any pets.
Mr Roberts said he stumbled across the idea after getting interest from mothers who were looking to plant their placentas.
“I then spoke to some midwives, who said that they have needed something like this as an option for mums for a long time,” he said.
“Most mothers we found didn’t take their placentas home as they didn’t know what to do with it, except the choice of making pills out of it to ingest — that is is a little hard to swallow for most.”