When Basil Eldadah’s father, Adnan, died in 2012, his body was wrapped in a cloth shroud to honor his request for a simple burial. But then he was laid to rest in a concrete vault in a conventional cemetery, miles from his Rockville home.
“He believed that our bodies should go back to the earth in simplicity, but he did not necessarily expect that for himself, because he, like the rest of us, did not know that there were any options,” says Eldadah, a program manager for biomedical research who lives in Rockville.
Later this year, Eldadah and others hope to open a “natural” cemetery in the Cloverly area of Silver Spring that would have granted the last wishes of his father and others like him. Reflection Park, which is awaiting approval from the Department of Permitting Services as of press time, would cover 40 wooded acres on New Hampshire Avenue.
“This is a way for a loved one’s body to continue to give back to the earth,” Eldadah says. “It’s also a space to enjoy the majesty of nature.”
Natural cemeteries are the opposite of conventional cemeteries that one might imagine. Rather than rows of headstones, there are modest-size memorial markers, flush with the ground. Instead of manicured grass, the landscaping is whatever disturbs existing flora the least.
Below ground, burial containers are made of natural products—think willow, bamboo or pine—rather than concrete burial vaults. Toxic embalming fluid is verboten. Cemeteries that stick to these standards can be certified by the Green Burial Council.
A goal of Reflection Park organizers is to plant and preserve native trees and flowers—as many or more trees than they take down, Eldadah says. An entrance gate will be one of the only indicators that the area is a cemetery and organizers plan for every grave to be within 20 feet of at least one tree that will benefit from the fertilization that decomposition will offer.
Natural cemeteries “aren’t just warehouses for the dead,” says Lee Webster, former board president of the Green Burial Council, a national information clearinghouse. “They are places where we are using burial as a means of connecting people to nature. … It’s also a deliberate strategy for saving land.”
Natural cemeteries are a trend that is growing in the state—the first such cemetery in Maryland was Serenity Ridge Natural Burial Cemetery and Arboretum in Baltimore County in January 2023—and nationally. The number of green burial cemeteries in the U.S. has more than tripled since 2015, with 109 then to 355 in 2023, according to data compiled by New Hampshire Funeral Resources and Education.
Other cemeteries, such as the Garden of Remembrance in Clarksburg, are hybrid sites that set aside a portion of land in conventional settings for natural burials. Such cemeteries are on the rise in Maryland, from just a couple a few years ago to eight today, according to Jennifer Downs, board president of the Green Burial Association of Maryland.
Funeral home directors are getting on board with the green burial concept, too. “We’re adapting,” says Jack Mitchell, a board member of the National Funeral Directors Association and head of the Mitchell-Wiedefeld Funeral Home in Baltimore. “Whatever the family wants, we want to support them.”
Eldadah also says Reflection Park may be less expensive than a conventional burial. A 2021 study by the National Funeral Directors Association put the average cost of a casket burial in the United States at $7,848, with cremation averaging $6,970. The additional cost for a burial plot varies widely by location and can top $10,000. At Reflection Park, cost for the gravesite, interment and a memorial marker would be between $4,500 and $5,000, according to Eldadah.
While cremation is not considered to be an ecologically sound practice—it involves running a furnace at nearly 2,000 degrees for up to two hours, producing emissions comparable to driving a car 500 miles, according to the Green Burial Council—cremains will be allowed at Reflection Park. They will be mixed with a soil amendment that reduces alkalinity and promotes their degradation, according to Reflection Park’s website.
Downs sums up the mission of natural cemeteries succinctly: “It’s returning the body to the earth in a natural, simple and dignified way.”
This story appears in the March/April issue of Bethesda Magazine.
