The Centre for Natural Burial

Fernwood Cemetery in Marin County now offers green burials.
By - 30 Minutes Bay Area, CBS-5 (San Francisco)
The green burial movement started in the United Kingdom where there are now about 150 sites. Dr. Billy Campbell founded the US’s first green burial cemetery in Westminster, SC. Opened in 1998, the Ramsey Creek Preserve now has had […]

Lori Valigra, National Geographic News
A burial in outer space seems a fitting farewell for James Doohan, the actor who played the beloved engineer “Scotty” on Star Trek. To honor his final wishes, some of Doohan’s ashes will be shot into space this fall, along with a CD of tributes from fans and loved ones.
Celebrities aren’t […]

By Tad Friend, The New YorkerHow much rest do the dead require? Late this spring, two experts were discussing burial theory over lunch at a Japanese restaurant in Mill Valley, California. The elder man, Ron Hast, had just visited Fernwood, a new “green” cemetery on the edge of town owned by the […]

By Amy Davidson, The New Yorker Magazine
This week in the magazine, Tad Friend writes about the California cemeterian who is trying to redefine the idea of last rites. Here, with Amy Davidson, he talks about green burials, graveyard tourism, and the future of funerals.

By Patricia Leigh Brown, New York Times
MILL VALLEY, Calif. - Tommy Odom’s remains lie on a steep wind-swept hill at Forever Fernwood, beneath an oak sapling, a piece of petrified wood and a bundle of dried sage tied with a lavender ribbon.
When he died in a traffic accident last year, Mr. Odom, 41, became the […]

Reclaiming the realities and rituals of death
By Nancy Rommelmann, LA Times Cover Story
For centuries in America, we tended to our dead. People died at home, and relatives prepared the body, laid it out in the parlor and sat by as callers paid final respects. The body was buried in the family cemetery, if there was […]

By Bobby Caina Calvan, The Boston GlobeMILL VALLEY, Calif. - The organic movement has long been a way of life for California’s north coast, and now a Marin County cemetery is taking things further: a “green” cemetery that touts biodegradable caskets, the wilderness, and a back-to-nature approach to taking care of the […]

By Megan Heidlberg, WNEG32
A trail in Westminster, South Carolina, isn’t your typical forest trail. It’s actually a burial ground too. Scattered amongst the trees, leaves, and waterfall lies more than 20 graves.

LEONORA LaPETER, St. Petersburg TimesGLENDALE - Robert Pridgen lay in the vegetable cooler, in a poplar box cut from nearby trees. Lung cancer had taken him the day before. He was 48.

Back-to-nature burials in biodegradable caskets conserve land
By Barbara Basler, AARP Newsletter
In lovely woods just outside the tiny town of Westminster, S.C., discreetly scattered among the tall pines and poplars, are 20 graves, many hand-dug by Billy Campbell.
The graves, mounds of earth dotted with wildflowers and bathed in dappled sunlight, are marked with flat stones engraved […]