Carrie Blackmore Smith

csmith@enquirer.com

Would you like to be buried in a willow casket?

Perhaps seagrass or bamboo?

Spring Grove Cemetery and Arboretum has a new green burial area, where the dead – unembalmed – can be lowered into the ground for eternity.

Lined by a stand of mature trees, the area was developed with green burials in mind, said Gary Freytag, Spring Grove's chief executive officer.

"It is absolutely beautiful,” Freytag said.

Whether it's a return to simplicity or to cut interment costs, green burials are gaining popularity in the United States.

Some cemeteries have been offering them for more than a decade.

"Consumers are looking for a more natural return to the earth with fewer residual chemicals," a news release from Spring Grove issued Tuesday reads.

Cemeteries have offered green options for a long time "in the sense that cemeteries typically do not require the remains to be embalmed or require a grave to be marked," noted Robert M. Fells, executive director and general counsel at the International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association, based in Sterling, Virginia. "Also, in urban areas a cemetery may be one of the few areas that are wooded."

But Dave Rees, area manager at Newcomer Funeral Homes, said some in the industry anticipate green burials following the path of cremation.

"A lot of funeral directors never thought cremation was going to catch on," Rees said. "Now, fast forward to 2016, nearly half of our business is serving families that desire cremation."

If you think a green burial is cheap, think again.

Spring Grove Cemetery's caskets come in two different prices: $995 and $1,595. A burial plot in the green designated area runs in the $4,000 range, according to cemetery spokesperson Debbie Budke.

Spring Grove will not offer internment in a burial shroud, as some cemeteries around the country do, because the cemetery will use a standard casket lowering device to "ensure the safety of both our visitors and Spring Grove staff," Budke said.

The price of a burial plot will include a simple footstone, though it is not mandatory to use one.

Green burials can get pretty wild these days, there are detoxifying mushroom suits and even biodegradable pods that become trees, according to an article by U.S. News and World Report magazine.

Some cemeteries allow loved ones to dig the hole.

Newcomer Funeral Homes' website links www.naturalend.com, which contains a map to find cemeteries that are more like nature preserves and where people are buried with no grave marker at all.

Maybe you wish to be buried on a prairie at Foxfield Preserve in Wilmot, Ohio, located in northeast Ohio’s Stark County?

Right now, Spring Grove is the only local cemetery to Cincinnati that Newcomer's Rees is aware of with packages and a specific area for green burials, though some others will allow it.

"Just last week we did a green burial at St. John’s Cemetery in St. Bernard," Rees said. "It's an old cemetery and not many burials take place there anymore, but they honored the wishes of the deceased."