Dearly departed find green peace

Post / Jerry Cleveland John Horan of Horan & McConaty Funeral Service is building a 1-acre park where ashes can be scattered, buried or stored.

By Christine Tatum, Denver Post Business Writer Environmentalists are breaking new ground to memorialize the dead. Alarmed by the amount of chemicals, concrete and metals buried in cemeteries and at the amount of water used each year to keep the grounds lush, nature lovers are looking for more Earth-friendly ways to rest in peace and scouting for burial grounds that respect the environment.

And whether they are looking for a "greener" place or way to bury a loved one, or a natural but protected place to scatter or store ashes, the quest is changing the landscape of American cemeteries.

In the metro area, where there are fewer than 10 major cemeteries and another dozen or so smaller ones, scattering gardens are being developed and thirsty landscaping is giving way to native plantings.

When her first husband died almost three years ago, it never occurred to Joleen Schneider to mark his passing by having his body embalmed and placed in a steel casket that would be placed in a concrete vault and buried under a swath of thirsty green grass.

Schneider is executive director of Prospect Home Care Hospice in Woodland Park and is no stranger to funerals. She helped ensure that the ashes of her own parents and grandparents were scattered in their favorite ocean spots near the Florida Keys.

She worked with her husband and their children to come up with a perfect place for his memorial. They quickly identified Mountain Wilderness Memorial Park, at the base of Pikes Peak, about 20 miles west of Colorado Springs in rural Teller County.

Trails wind around the 2-acre park, which features an outdoor chapel with breathtaking views. Customers roam the land, then choose a small plot, where they work ashes into the soil and mark the site with only a flat stone.

"When you see what's happening there, you can't see how the traditional cemetery can continue," Schneider said. "There isn't going to be enough space one day, and ecologically, what are we doing in the long term?"

Don and Barbara Blehm wondered the same and endured confused stares from state officials when they created the memorial park 16 years ago.

"But we kept at it because it's that important to the environment and for people who want a place they can always visit after they scatter a loved one's ashes," he said. "It was an idea way ahead of its time. I'd heard one too many sad stories from people who couldn't remember where they'd put grandma - or couldn't visit her because a house or shopping center had been built there."

At Riverside Cemetery near Denver's Swansea neighborhood, dry weather and limited water rights have created landscaping problems resulting in dozens of angry calls, said Frank Hegner, president of Fairmount Cemetery Co., owner and operator of Riverside.

"Everyone who comes out to the cemetery expects it to look a certain way," he said. "They forget that this is a desert environment. They're stuck in this mind-set of wanting cemeteries that cheat nature with (non-native) trees and water we're running out of."

John Horan, president of Horan & McConaty Funeral Service, said the visual appeal of a highly developed cemetery can be achieved with native, drought-tolerant plantings.

This month he expects to open the 1-acre Rocky Mountain Memorial Park in the 3200 block of South Parker Road in Denver. There, ashes can be scattered among trees, native wildflowers and prairie grasses, buried beneath granite boulders along a small creek, or stored in traditional niches.

The idea was to create a protected setting that evoked the mountains, but the result is "simply a nice, quiet place where people could come and read a book," Horan said. "I've already received a couple of calls from people interested in holding receptions here."

That intersection of life and death is a driving force behind efforts to change the face of the American cemetery.

Supporters of eco-friendly memorials often are drawn to the movement because they disdain the notion of burial on an isolated plot that folks think to visit only when they mourn or want to stir up some Halloween mischief.

"We have made death haunting and frightening, and continue to think of cemeteries as creepy places," said Dr. Billy Campbell, whose 33-acre Ramsey Creek Nature Preserve in Westminster, S.C., is the nation's first "green burial" site. The idea, however, is nothing new in England, home to more than 120 such sites.

Campbell, long passionate about environmental studies, opened the preserve in 1996 with a lofty goal: ecological restoration. The preserve, managed by a company called Memorial Ecosystems, accepts cremated remains. But because the process contributes to air pollution, Campbell said he encourages green burials. That means bodies cannot be embalmed and that caskets must be made from biodegradable materials.

At Ramsey Creek, graves are marked only with flat stones native to the area. About 25 people have been memorialized there.

Campbell's vision is inspiring others. Two brothers, who promised their parents they would never develop the family's 350-acre estate, opened Glendale Memorial Preserve in the Florida Panhandle in May.

Campbell hopes to head a national network of green-burial nature preserves, but widely varying state laws promise to make the task difficult.

Green burial is so new that the law simply hasn't caught up with it yet, said Joy Stewart, a Madison, Wis., resident who is seeking grassroots support before slogging through government bureaucracy in her community. "This is something that is so obvious and simple that it has to be ridiculously overthought," she said.

Consumers may not have to think hard about which route to choose in light of costs. On average, Coloradans paid $5,830 for funerals in 2001, according to the National Funeral Directors Association. By contrast, such services range from $250 to $1,950 at Memorial Ecosystems, and a full package at Mountain Wilderness Memorial Park costs $1,700.

Even complicated, more technically involved sea burials can be cheaper than traditional services and still have a positive impact on the environment, said Don Brawley, founder and president of Eternal Reefs in Atlanta.

Brawley said his dying father-in-law gave him the idea to mix cremated remains into a concrete-like substance that is crafted into an artificial ocean reef.

Eternal Reefs and its sister company - Reef Ball Development Group, a maker of artificial reefs - work with the Environmental Protection Agency and coastal states to identify suitable locations for the reefs.

Underwater engineers typically install the structures while family and friends of the deceased watch and reminisce from a nearby boat. The company's services cost between $1,500 and $5,000. So far, more than 200 memorial reefs have been placed.

"A casket and concrete vault aren't going to change the body's fate," Brawley said. "So why not choose something that gives life instead?"

Heck, whatever floats your boat. The deceased doesn't care, and it sounds like good solid capitalism to me to have a site double as a cemetary AND a wedding reception hall.

Although I'm not sure I would eat there.

I actually agree with you. I'm not against someone filling a demand, even if it is a demand by EPA-lovin', tree-huggin', granola-eatin', mother-earth-worshippin' freaks. Capitalism rules dude. But what caught my eye was that this is a weird demand to fill. It's one of those things that I certainly don't think about too often, and when I do, it's more of a 'whatever happens, happens' philosophy.

And whether they are looking for a "greener" place or way to bury a loved one,

What would be more "green" than to be buried in a wooden coffin under your favorite tree?

At least the tree would benefit from the remains as it decomposes, rather than just the soil's pH being conditioned by the spreading of cremated ashes, or, worse yet, the remains held captive in a concrete vault surrounding a steel casket.

We put way too much emphasis on the dead, beyond celebrating their lives and achievements, worrying instead about how the manner of burial will resist nature reclaiming its own.

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