Tennessee
Tennessee’s hills hum with history, songs of mountains, rivers, and resilience. It’s a place where the land has always held meaning, and where community is woven into the landscape itself. That same spirit now guides the growing movement toward green and natural burial across the Volunteer State.
🌿Narrowridge Burial Preserve - Washburn, TN
In the peaceful hills of Grainger County, Tennessee, the Narrow Ridge Natural Burial Preserve offers a place where simplicity, reverence, and ecology meet. This 5-acre woodland burial ground honors the natural life cycle, allowing the human body to return to the earth gently, without embalming fluids, metal caskets, or concrete vaults.
Unlike conventional cemeteries that separate us from the soil, Narrow Ridge invites families to become part of the forest’s renewal. Graves are hand-dug or opened by a local operator, and each body is wrapped in a biodegradable shroud or placed in a simple wooden casket made from natural or reclaimed materials. Over time, the burial preserve will naturally reforest, a living memorial trail winding through trees, wildflowers, and birdsong.
Founded by the Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Center, the preserve embodies the center’s mission of sustainable living and spiritual ecology. Burial fees are donation-based, ensuring that every person, regardless of financial means, can choose an earth-friendly farewell. Memorial gatherings take place under a timber-frame pavilion that blends seamlessly with the landscape, offering space for reflection and community connection.
🌿Larkspur Conservation Burial - Westmoreland, TN
In the rolling hills just outside Nashville, Larkspur Conservation is redefining what it means to be laid to rest, not in a cemetery, but within a protected nature preserve. Stretching across meadows, forests, and wildflower fields, Larkspur is Tennessee’s first conservation burial ground, where every burial helps heal and protect the land.
At Larkspur, the land is permanently safeguarded by a conservation easement, held by an independent accredited land trust. This binding agreement ensures the forest will never be developed, no subdivisions, no pavement, no parking lots, only thriving ecosystems of oak, hickory, and native grasses. Each burial becomes part of that ecosystem, contributing both physically and financially to the land’s care and restoration.
Here, there is no embalming, no vaults, no metal or plastic, only natural materials that allow the body to return fully to the soil. The preserve’s team plants native species, pulls invasives, restores soil health, and tends the land with reverence. This is more than green burial, it’s reciprocity with the earth, a practice that turns loss into legacy and memory into restoration.
The Larkspur team walks families through every step of the process, from coordinating with funeral homes to preparing the grave and leading ceremonies. Each burial begins with a quiet procession through nature and ends with loved ones returning handfuls of earth to the grave. Flowers, pine needles, and song often close the ritual, leaving behind beauty and peace instead of sorrow.
Larkspur reminds us that we don’t need new laws or new technology to protect the planet, we need to protect the land itself. Conservation burial transforms the way we think about death, offering an alternative to consumption and pollution: one that sequesters carbon, creates wildlife habitat, and restores ecosystems for generations to come.
🌿Elmwood Cemetery (hybrid) - Memphis, TN
Elmwood Cemetery allows Green Burials. Green burials are an environmentally-conscious approach to interment. These burials typically involve a shroud or biodegradable casket without a burial vault or liner, and alternative use of embalming fluids. A licensed funeral director will be able to explain the process of Green Burials. Check with your local, trusted funeral homes to inquire about this safe alternative to traditional funeral practices. Headstones and monuments are allowed for Green Burials at Elmwood. The prices for Green Burials at Elmwood are the same as traditional interment services.
At the heart of Tennessee’s green burial movement is a love of place, one that values conservation, stewardship, and the peace that comes from knowing your final act gives back to the earth. Whether it’s a wildflower blooming where a grave once was, or a family gathering under the shade of native trees, Tennessee reminds us that death, too, can be an act of renewal.
If you want information on how to start your own natural burial cemetery, or you want to make me aware of another green, natural, or hybrid cemetery in this state, please reach out!
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