Plans for green burial site
By Craig Christie
MORAY could gain its first green burial site as part of the legacy of a co-founder of the Findhorn Foundation community. An application has been lodged by the son of Eileen Caddy to create a natural resting place in a section of woodland near the village.
Johnathan Caddy, a director of Duneland Ltd, which owns the proposed site at Wilkie Wood, just north of Findhorn, is the man at the forefront of the project.
His mother, who died in December last year, helped establish the world famous eco-community back in 1965 and had her ashes buried in the woodlands.
The land is situated just 300 yards from 51-year-old Mr Caddy’s Pineridge home, where he has lived since the age of six.
He revealed that there had already been two “dry run” green burials in the woodland within the past year, the maximum permitted before an application had to be made for it to become a designated memorial site.
“It isn’t something which has come out of the blue,” he said. “We have been discussing it for 10 years.
“It just needed someone to champion it, and because of my mother’s death, it gave me the impetus to go ahead with it.”
“She saw it as a much simpler way of doing things.”
The Duneland area was identified as a perfect site after the wood was damaged in gales almost two years ago, leading to a large number of trees coming down.
A small area of the cleared forestry measuring 50 by 70 metres was laid out for the purposes of the application, which was registered earlier this month.
The Findhorn Hinterland Group, a local conservation organisation, will be entrusted with the running of the facility if it is given the go-ahead.
Green burial offers a ‘return to nature’ option for people burying their loved ones in a plot surrounded by wildlife. No gravestones are used, but small personalised plates are laid below soil level to mark where the body is.
Initially a low key project involving members of the foundation, Mr Caddy – who works in Elgin as a teacher of English as an additional language – hopes it could benefit the wider community.
“Rather than getting involved in a commercial business, it needs to become a community resource for the whole village and beyond,” he said.
He said he has been approached by a number of people who have expressed a wish to be buried in such a way, but until now he has been unable to provide such a service.
“I’m doing this because there is a demand locally – it is a resource which would be used,” he said.
“I’ve already had a lot of support and I’m quite pleased with the positive nature of the whole idea.
“We want it to be not too expensive, open to the people, and any monies made from it would go back into the conservation of the forest and dune area.
A similar facility opened last summer at Delliefure, in the Cairngorms National Park, just outside Grantown-on-Spey.