Green burial cemeteries bury people without embalming fluid, concrete vaults or metal caskets, and every one of them writes its own rules. This ranking is for anyone planning ahead, and for families who have three days rather than three months to choose. It collects grounds across the United States that state plainly what they allow, what they charge and who guards the land once the last grave is filled.
Selection began with certification and ownership. Preference went to burial grounds certified by the Green Burial Council at the natural or conservation level, operated by nonprofits, land trusts or religious communities, and backed by a conservation easement plus an endowment fed from plot sales. Then came the practical questions: published plot and interment fees, hand digging versus machines, marker rules, driving distance from the nearest city, whether a family can reach a grave without walking a mile, whether staff work with any funeral home, and how much of the burial the family may do itself.
Places here are ordered by community votes, not by the editors and never by payment. Read each card for the pros, the cons and the reviews of people who have actually buried someone. Space in the best known green burial cemeteries is going fast, several have paused advance sales, and only a phone call will confirm today's price.
prairiecreekconservationcemetery.org
A group of Gainesville residents met monthly for three years before this cemetery existed; burials began in 2010. The nonprofit Conservation Burial Inc. runs 78 acres inside Prairie Creek Preserve near Paynes Prairie, with Alachua Conservation Trust handling restoration and a county easement blocking development in perpetuity. Florida licenses it as an exempt cemetery and the Green Burial Council certifies it at the highest level: no embalming fluid, no vaults, flowering meadow and oak forest instead of mown turf.
It suits people who want a burial fee to buy and mend land, and families at ease in a place left deliberately wild. It suits less well anyone expecting a single building to handle everything, since care of the body goes through a funeral home or a home funeral while the office sits downtown on West University Avenue. Mapping apps often aim visitors at a private residential road, so stay on County Road 234 to the marked entrance.
Gainesville, FL, 7204 SE County Road 234
Ramsey Creek opened in 1996 and is usually credited as the first modern conservation burial ground in the country, founded by physician Billy Campbell and Kimberley Campbell through their company Memorial Ecosystems. The preserve covers roughly 33 acres of woodland and creek bottom where the Southern Appalachians meet the Piedmont, about an hour south of Greenville and an hour and a half north of Atlanta. Graves are dug by hand, markers are local stone set flat, and the Cross Roads Chapel with its trail network serves visitors between services.
Worth a look for anyone who values the original model and staff who have handled natural burials for nearly thirty years; the same company consults for communities building preserves of their own. Less convincing if institutional permanence is your first test, since the ground is privately held rather than vested in a land trust. Current prices and available sections are best confirmed by phone.
Westminster, SC, 390 Cobb Bridge Road
Honey Creek Woodlands occupies land belonging to the Monastery of the Holy Spirit outside Conyers: about 120 acres of the monks' 2,300 are given to burial, inside more than 1,000 acres of permanently protected wetland, stream and hardwood forest. A conservation easement held by the Georgia Piedmont Land Trust and an endowment fed from plot sales support the promise of permanence. The site is old cotton ground, restored since 2006. Published figures put hill top sites at 2,600 dollars plus a 250 dollar site preparation charge at burial, with engraved local stones from 250 to 450 dollars and a 10 percent discount for payment in full.
Open to every faith and to people with none, and close enough to Atlanta for a weekday visit. Remember that the stewards handle burial only: funeral, officiant and transport are the family's to arrange, and the monks pray for the deceased rather than lead the service.
Conyers, GA, 2625 GA-212
Founded in 2008 by The Wilderness Center, a nature centre and land trust operating since 1964, Foxfield was the first nature preserve cemetery in the United States run by a nonprofit conservation organisation. Instead of lawn there is tallgrass prairie under restoration and hillsides returning to beech maple forest; controlled burns come round every three to five years, and fallen trees stay where they land unless they block access. The Wilderness Center protects some 3,380 acres across seven Ohio counties, and burial fees feed that work.
Both body burial and burial or scattering of cremated remains are offered, with the purchase handled through staged forms on the website and an office in the Hart Interpretive Building a mile from the graves. Staff will drive attendees with mobility problems straight to the grave if warned in advance. Services are graveside, so plan for Ohio weather.
Wilmot, OH, 9877 Alabama Avenue SW
North Carolina's first conservation burial ground opened in December 2015 and took its first burial in July 2016. The nonprofit works 11 acres near Asheville: wildflower meadow, woodland, a creek running to the French Broad and a wetland recovered from under sixteen inches of fill dirt. Conserving Carolina holds the easement and receives 1 percent of proceeds. Rules follow the strict end of the scale: hand dug graves under three feet, no embalming, shrouds or biodegradable caskets, flat natural stones, no cars among the plots. Pets may be buried here too.
Cost runs roughly a third to a half of a conventional burial, which explains the queue: the Mills River site is filling up, so advance sales of natural burial have stopped while a second location within thirty minutes of Asheville is sought. Cremated remains tours still run; graves are reached on foot, with a shuttle if you call several days ahead.
Mills River, NC, 195 Blessed Way
Pennsylvania's first exclusively green cemetery has been burying people since 2011 on roughly 32 acres in Penn Hills, thirteen miles from downtown Pittsburgh, bordered by Plum Creek a mile above the Allegheny River. About a third of the ground is kept as habitat rather than burial space. No vaults are used, only biodegradable coffins or shrouds, and there is a Jewish burial grove sanctified for traditional practice as well as woodland sites among mature trees.
The pricing page separates burial rights from interment fees and lists the extras, with monthly plans running one to three years for families who need them. Tents and chairs come at no charge, Sunday burials carry no surcharge, and staff work with any funeral home. Two practical notes: the mailing address on Kansas Street differs from the Colorado Street entrance used by satellite navigation, and new sections are opened in batches, so choice depends on timing.
Verona, PA, 121 Colorado Street
Tennessee's first conservation burial ground sits on 112 acres of former farmland along the highland rim, across the road from the Nature Conservancy's Taylor Hollow, one of the most biodiverse woods in the South. Larkspur donated the easement to the Conservancy, so the meadows and hollows cannot be developed. Burials use no embalming chemicals, plastics, metals or concrete; the preserve is open to visitors from dawn to dusk every day, and the nonprofit runs a library and learning centre in Nashville for workshops on end of life care and grief.
Staff coordinate directly with the funeral home a family chooses, help select a site in person or remotely, and prepare the grave. Nashville is about forty miles away by back roads, and the ground is steep in places: mobility needs should be raised early, because not every site can be reached easily. A second preserve of 170 acres in Hickman County is being funded.
Westmoreland, TN, Bear Carr Road, Sumner County
Incorporated in 2004 and open since 2006, Greensprings occupies 130 acres of hilltop meadow south of Ithaca, hemmed in by roughly 8,000 acres of Cornell's Arnot Forest and Newfield State Forest. It has taken more than 500 burials. Nothing here resembles a monument yard: settling mounds, occasional flat field stones, commemorative plantings of native trees and shrubs that feed birds rather than decorate a plot. No embalming fluid, no concrete vault, simple caskets or shrouds only.
The association is a nonprofit and the paperwork is unfussy: visit and pick a site, or buy an unassigned one through the website. Good for families in the Finger Lakes and downstate who want a plain, inexpensive return to the ground. Less good if someone needs a chapel, a heated room or a level path in February, because the site is exposed and the winter drive up Irish Hill Road is genuinely rural.
Newfield, NY, 293 Irish Hill Road
Founded in 2008 at Ekone Ranch above Rock Creek Canyon, White Eagle is a 20 acre burial ground inside more than 1,200 protected acres of oak and ponderosa pine, held by the nonprofit Sacred Earth Foundation. It was among the first conservation burial grounds certified by the Green Burial Council and a founding member of the Conservation Burial Alliance. Burial is low density: sites measure 20 by 20 feet on a grid that keeps graves clear of tree roots, with roughly 1,200 of them platted. Graves are opened with pickaxes and shovels, closed by hand, and dressed with forest duff and garden plants.
Families who want to carry, lower and cover the body themselves get real support here, including a community fund that helps with cost. The trade off is distance and logistics: two and a half hours from Portland, about four from Seattle, thirty minutes of gravel from Goldendale, no drop in visits and patchy mobile signal.
Goldendale, WA, 401 Ekone Road
Glendale has been burying people since 2002 on more than 350 acres of restored longleaf pine in north Walton County, midway between Mobile and Tallahassee and forty miles inland from the Gulf. It is a 501(c)(13) nonprofit: burial fees, donations and event income go back into stewardship, and about 80 percent of the land is to stay undeveloped, with only trails and boardwalks added. There is an outdoor chapel pavilion and a boardwalk over Lake Barbara. Caskets are not required at all; the single rule is biodegradable materials.
This is the most do it yourself option on the list, and the preserve openly supports home funerals and will point families to inexpensive shrouds or plain boxes. The flip side: there is no spare staff. Tours are free but must be arranged, someone has to be told when you are coming, and the buildings are modest rather than polished.
DeFuniak Springs, FL, 297 Railroad Avenue (entrance 9030 SR 83)