Every spring and fall Larkspur hosts a Memorial Planting Day where families can come and plant a living memorial on their loved one’s grave.
Learn what these days involve as we care for both families and for the conservation of the land.
This weekend the entire Larkspur staff spent our Saturday with more than 20 families at our Taylor Hollow Preserve. It was a day spent together in nature full of love, honoring, and community.
Twice a year, Larkspur hosts a Memorial Planting Day where folks who want to purchase a living memorial can join us at the preserve and plant native species on their loved one’s grave that Larkspur has chosen to best further the restoration of the land we all love.
This past spring we planted Virginia Bluebells, Eastern Bee Balm, and Smooth White Beardtongue. On Saturday, families planted Culver’s Root, Prairie Phlox, River Oats, Golden Alexander, and Allegheny Spurge—all native pollinators that will enhance the beauty and health of the land and serve the animals that live there for years to come.
These Memorial Planting Days become a really special community event where families spend the day in the preserve, bring picnic foods, share memories with one another, and join in a commemoration of honoring loved ones. Sometimes folks bring their dogs to join in the fun; other times friends of the family are invited to share in the festivities.
It’s a time where different members of the Larkspur community meet one another with everyone grounded in a similar experience: the grief of losing someone they love and the knowledge that a green burial at Larkspur was the right choice for laying that person to rest.
If you’re wondering what a Memorial Planting Day at Larkspur is like, and why we do what we do, read on and learn more:
Caring for People
The day begins like most green burials at our Taylor Hollow preserve, by meeting as a group at the Larkspur trailhead. Together as a group we hike up into the meadow and gather around the picnic tables to settle into the space for the day.
Our entire staff then spends a full day at the preserve working with and helping families establish plants onto graves. If families cannot attend the physical planting, our land stewards transplant these living memorials into the ground for them. We often schedule several families around the same time so they can meet and connect with other people who have loved ones buried at Larkspur, and so our staff can spend ample time attending to them. We encourage folks to go slow and really soak up the experience.
The planting is a moment of connection not only with someone they loved who has died, but it’s also a moment to connect with mother nature and the life of the land that is growing around them. The natural world of our conservation grounds becomes a therapeutic presence.
Through green burial at Larkspur families find solace and peace, but through our Memorial Planting Days we often find that these same families find community and healing. Season after season these plants will grow, flower, and propagate themselves. People will see their loved one’s graves bloom and offer new life to the natural world around them—each grave literally becomes the source of restoration across the preserve. It’s an incredibly important event and we are forever in awe of the wonderful people who choose to participate.
Caring for the Land
Our community planting days are not only for the health of those grieving, but for the health of the land we love and care for as well. Conservation and environmental stewardship is at the core of who we are and what we do. Just as we have a responsibility to care for the grieving people that come to us, we also have a duty to responsibly care for the land.
What’s native to east or west Tennessee is wildly different from what’s native to middle Tennessee. Because of this, our conservation efforts often look even more closely at the county and ecoregion level. It’s imperative that we always do what is best for the land and the critters that call it home. Every way we interact with the land is an attempt to restore it to its original and most healthful state.
For memorial planting days at Larkspur, we select species in collaboration with our nursery partners not just for what’s native, but what will add to habitat, food forage, pollinator use, and other ecological values as well. When a family purchases a planting, we order 6-8 plants of the same species to make sure they have the best chance possible of thriving, cross-pollinating, and seeding from the individual grave.
By planting all of those perennials together, the burial site itself becomes the source of restoration across the preserve. It blooms into a living memorial that will become part of a lasting ecosystem for generations to come.
If you’re interested in learning more about green burial at Larkspur, rituals like our planting days, or the many community events we offer, please contact us. We’d love to chat with you about why Larkspur might be the right end-of-life decision for you and your loved ones.