May they rest in cardboard boxes

By ANNE BESTON and THE INDEPENDENT

Barbara Cartland did it, and actor Ralph Fiennes chose it for his mother. After decades of increasingly elaborate funerals, thousands of people are going back to basics, buying cardboard coffins and planting trees in place of headstones.

Now a Scottish farmer has opened Britain's biggest "green burial ground", converting 15ha of farmland into a woodland cemetery with room for 12,000 graves.

Alex Rankin's site, Clovery Woods of Rest, near Aberdeenshire, is the latest of more than 140 "green" cemeteries that have sprung up around Britain since the first opened nine years ago.

The Natural Death Centre in London estimates that hundreds of people are now being buried every month in cemeteries where headstones are replaced by trees such as birch, oak and rowan, or discreet wooden sculptures to mark out a grave.

In contrast to the formality and blandness of modern council cemeteries, "green" burial grounds feature young forests, copses and flower meadows.

Ornate polished hardwood caskets are replaced by biodegradable cardboard coffins, or even wicker and cloth.

Woodland burials are also providing a new source of income for Britain's hard-pressed farmers and are, say enthusiasts, a romantic and practical way to rebuild native woodlands.

But it seems New Zealanders are not rushing to book grandma a green funeral. Waikumete Cemetery general manager Graham Resnick said only two of the 25 plots at Waikumete's "Avenue of Remembrance" - designed for green funerals - had been taken since it was established in 1996.

For burial in the Avenue, the cemetery stipulates that a casket of untreated timber must be used and the body must not be embalmed. Everything in the coffin and on the body must be biodegradable, and a tree is used to mark the spot - no headstones allowed.

Mr Resnick did not know why the Avenue was not more popular, but said people might be put off by not being able to erect a headstone.

There are no woodland burial grounds in New Zealand, but the owner of a Motueka funeral service specialising in environmentally friendly funerals, Lynda Hannah, of Living Legacies, said she was in the process of trying to get them established.

Living Legacies' simple cardboard coffin with canvas handles costs $100. An ordinary standard casket costs about $800.

DEATH DETAILS

* The average cost of a funeral is $4465 for a burial, and $3718 for cremation.

* There were 26,650 deaths in New Zealand in the year ending September 2000, down 4.6 per cent on the previous year

* Most people now die after retirement age, a trend which has become more pronounced in the last two decades

* Average life expectancy in New Zealand is 79.6 years for women and 74.3 years for men. Regionally, Canterbury has the highest life expectancy at 77.8 years, then Auckland (77.7), Otago and Nelson/Marlborough/Tasman (77.6). Lowest life expectancies are in rural areas, Northland (75.5), West Coast (75.4), and Gisborne (73.3).

* Approximately 75 per cent of funerals in cities are cremations and 90 per cent in rural areas are burials.

* Funeral attendances tend to be much larger in rural areas than in cities.

* Rural New Zealanders and South Islanders are more likely to have church-based funerals than their North Island counterparts.

Living Legacies

Waitakere City Council

Grief care