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Sacred Groves™
Earth • Trees • Spirit
Family Groves & Conservation Burial
Home: Headliner
A Vision for Sacred Groves™
Walking along a gently used path, family members gather on the forest-covered hillside just as the sun breaks through the fog. Downhill, it will be a couple of hours before the grey mists disperse, exposing a sweeping view of the ocean and shoreline from the ridgetop redwood groves. The walk to the family grove always brought the conversations to a halt, for a moment.
The families each bring their own cultural traditions but share an awe of the place where they have come to remember their departed ones.
The memorial sites on the hillside in northwest Humboldt County all have in common what they lack: no headstones or above-ground monuments, no crypts or vaults, no toxic embalming fluids. Bodies are buried in simple caskets or shrouds, meant to decompose, or added to the earth as cremated remains. Family groves are available, ranging from planting a small redwood grove yourself, to adopting an existing second-growth or old-growth grove, or being buried under a fruit tree in an orchard. A 70-acre meadow in a basin facing the ocean provides a grassland alternative.
Memorial sites are not limited to human remains. A family pet, a placenta, or a tree planted for a newborn child or another family event are all within bounds. The notion is to foster traditions of marking key events in family histories and associating them with a place in nature that will be preserved as it has existed for centuries.
Incorporation in the active root zone makes 100% of the body’s nutrients available in the local ecosystem, much to be taken up in the redwoods and other conifers that dominate this 1,640-acre, old homestead and redwood forest, now preserved as part of a conservation network of biodiversity in the region. “Entreement” is offered as an alternative to interment, with the body’s physical elements ascending into the trees. Our entreed bodies thus become one with the earth, providing their nutrients to enrich soils, roots, and trees, becoming part of the web of life that sustains forest and meadow ecosystems.
Depending on their location on the property, some sites will be accessible at any time from the public road; other sites on the property will require an appointment. Families may choose to plant a grove before it is needed.
The property is managed by a nonprofit organization, Sacred Groves in cooperation with Landowner Eric and Mary Almquist.
Natural burial traditions exist in most human cultures. Now commonly called “green burial”, recent interest in creating burial alternatives to cement-lined cemetery crypts, which came into fashion around 150 years ago, mainly for ease of maintenance in urban cemeteries, has led to creation of natural-burial sections in some existing cemeteries, and to new conservation reserves like this one.
Copyright 2018: Sacred Groves™, a California Religious Corporation
We will offer “Family Groves”
Each grove will be approximately 2,500 square feet
(50’ square, or 56’ diameter circle, 10-15 per acre).
Groves convey to the buyer a well-defined set of rights:
To bury, scatter and visit a given number of
deceased family members and pets and place a simple monument.
Site and vegetation design is by the site owner,
with many choices offered.
Envisioned options
In an Orchard or Vinyard
Plant your Family Grove
Get an Existing Grove
In a native grassland
Sacred Groves has many existing groves, Some old growth groves are also available for early and founding members.
Grassland burial is available in areas where deep-rooted native grasses have been restored.
You may plant your own redwood or oak grove in designated areas. SG will help you if you need it.
Newly planted fruit orchards or small vinyard are available as Family Groves too.
Please contact us with your questions and
to get on our mailing list.
Sacred Family Groves. Arcata, CA 95521
707-797-7017
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