Cutting the Lawn − Natural Burial and Its Contribution to the Delivery Of

Urban Forestry & Urban Greening xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Urban Forestry & Urban Greening journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ufug Original article Cutting the lawn − Natural burial and its contribution to the delivery of ecosystem services in urban cemeteries ⁎ Andy Claydena, , Trish Greenb, Jenny Hockeyc, Mark Powelld a Department of Landscape, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK b Hull York Medical School, University of Hull, Hull HU6 7RX, UK c Department of Sociological Studies, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TU, UK d School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Newcastle University, Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Keywords: This article investigates the impact of natural burial on the delivery of ecosystem services (ESs) in urban ce- Ecosystem services meteries in England that are owned and managed by local authorities. Local authority natural burial sites have Identity received far less attention from researchers than independent sites developed by farmers, charitable trusts, Lawn cemetery funeral directors and land owners. Here we argue that the local authority hybrid cemeteries that combine natural Natural burial burial with traditional graves may have a far greater impact in delivering regulatory and cultural ecosystem Woodland services than the much larger and frequently more environmentally ambitious natural burial grounds developed by the independent sector. The article presents three case studies of cemeteries, each of which represents a different interpretation of natural burial. Two have retrofitted natural burial into an existing cemetery landscape. The third is a new cemetery where natural burial was included with traditional burial in the original design brief and planning application. The research reveals how natural burial is transforming the traditional cemetery, with its focus on an intensively managed lawn aesthetic, towards a more habitat rich and spatially complex landscape with its own distinctive identity. The research also reveals how natural burial (within the unique constraints of UK burial culture that does not permit the recycling of burial space) is increasing the burial capacity of urban cemeteries by accessing land and grave space that might not be suitable or appropriate for more traditional forms of burial. 1. Introduction as part of an Economic and Social Research Council funded project, (Clayden et al., 2015) that was updated in June 2016. It currently The natural burial movement began in 1993 in a municipal ceme- identifies 268 sites spread across the UK. This is comparable to the tery in the City of Carlisle in the United Kingdom (Clayden and Dixon, estimated 270 burial grounds recorded by the Natural Death Centre 2007). Ken West, then head of bereavement services, had a vision to (NDC), the organization which manages the Association of Natural transform a small area of rough grassland at the edge of the cemetery Burial Grounds (ANBG) (NDC, 2016). into native oak woodland by offering bereaved families the option to This article specifically focuses on the impact of natural burial eschew the traditional headstone and instead plant an oak tree on the within urban cemeteries managed by local authorities. Despite the fact grave. Nature would be the focus of this new cemetery landscape rather that natural burial originated within the public sector and that they than the preservation of individual graves and identities of the de- account for approximately half of all UK natural burial sites (Clayden ceased. In making this provision, West instigated a revolution in UK et al., 2015) they have received relatively little attention from the re- burial culture that had not been seen since the introduction of crema- search community. Researchers have instead focused on sites developed tion in the early part of the 20th Century (Jalland, 1999, Rugg, 2006). by independent providers including; charitable trusts and religious Understanding the scale of this movement is extremely difficult in the groups (Davies and Rumble 2012, Powell et al., 2011), farmers absence of any centralized record keeping in the UK (Hussain and Rugg, (Clayden et al., 2010a), and funeral directors (Clayden and Dixon, 2003); a challenge extant in other countries, including the USA (see, 2007, Clayden et al., 2010a, Clayden, 2011, Hockey et al., 2012). In her Coutts et al., 2011). In the absence of any centralized records, here we paper on 19th Century Garden Cemeteries, Tarlow alerts us to the draw on our own survey of UK natural burial sites, completed in 2013 danger of ‘focusing exclusively on the most innovative … exceptional or ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: a.clayden@sheffield.ac.uk (A. Clayden). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2017.08.012 Received 26 May 2017; Received in revised form 14 August 2017; Accepted 14 August 2017 1618-8667/ © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier GmbH. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY/4.0/). Please cite this article as: Clayden, A., Urban Forestry & Urban Greening (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2017.08.012 A. Clayden et al. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx unique’ as these may not be representative of national trends and tastes’ cemeteries in the UK were constructed between 1851 and 1914 (Tarlow, 2000: 220). As the natural burial movement began to gather (Hussain and Rugg, 2003). As such, they are often mature landscapes momentum in the mid to late 1990s, supported by the activities of the that frequently pre-date municipal parks and have been subject to NDC and encouraged by the writing of John Bradfield (1994), new changes in fashion, management and maintenance over an extended independent providers were motivated to develop their own inter- period of time. In the 19th Century, British cemetery design and man- pretations of natural burial, despite having no previous experience of agement was driven by an informal, naturalistic style and sites were designing or managing a cemetery. referred to as Garden cemeteries that were ‘attractively planted with These new burial providers, who included farmers and landowners, “domestic and exotic trees, shrubs and flowers” (Tarlow, 2000: 218). attracted significant media coverage and researchers were keen to un- With a strong emphasis on vegetation and maintained by hand, they derstand their motivation and vision. It was a time of great experi- would have made a positive contribution to a range of ESs. The rise of mentation around what a natural burial ground should look like and cremation in the early 20th century, however, challenged the ‘Victorian how it could most effectively achieve its environmental and ecological cemetery aesthetic, which was deemed no longer appropriate in a objectives. The concept of a tree on a grave was soon challenged as new modern age’ (Rugg, 2006: 214). The response was a radical change in providers experimented with different approaches to preserving and cemetery design and management and the introduction of the lawn creating a range of different habitats that included burial within wild- cemetery. Rugg accounts for its ‘invention and widespread adoption’,as flower meadows, woodland groves, mature woodland and orchards. a ‘rejection of Victorian aesthetics in favour of modern alternatives, These new, independent providers were unencumbered by the con- resource difficulties that, particularly after World War II, increasingly straints of working within an established municipal cemetery, nor had constrained what might be achieved in terms of cemetery maintenance, they experienced the potential challenges of working with bereaved and growing professionalism in the field of cemetery management’ people. They owned land in the countryside, which for many natural (Rugg, 2006: 217). Victorian cemeteries were simplified by removing burial consumers already expressed ideas of being ‘in nature’ (Clayden obstacles that included kerbsets and planting and by levelling earth et al., 2010b). Some new providers also brought a unique under- mounds on graves to enable access and regular cutting with new ma- standing of that land and had the skills and resources to realise their chinery. Extensions to cemeteries intensified the lawn aesthetic by re- own vision and interpretation of natural burial (Clayden et al., 2010a). ducing and standardizing the size of memorials and implementing a In contrast, the management of local authority sites was underpinned formal burial grid to enable further efficiencies in mowing. by the drive to maintain a more formal and manicured aesthetic of the Through this process the municipal cemetery was diminished in its traditional cemetery with its lawns, summer bedding and graves with capacity to deliver regulatory ESs. The intensive maintenance of fine headstones aligned in neat rows. Finding space for a wilder, ‘messy’ turf is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions (Milesi nature could thus be difficult and perhaps open to interpretations of et al., 2005). Both fossil fuel use in mowing and the application of neglect and perceived cost cutting by cemetery users. However, and in fertilizers/pesticides have significant negative impacts; e.g. lawns spite of these challenges, it was within the public sector that natural emitting up to 10 x more N2O than agricultural grassland (Livesley burial initially expanded with ‘more than 80 per cent’ of all sites de- et al., 2010). The extent to which turf releases greenhouse gases developed by local authorities

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