Natural burial sites ensure a final peace

A VERDANT meadow festooned with wild flowers; a grove of oaks beside a bubbling brook — a peaceful place for quiet reflection.

That is often what comes to mind when imagining our final farewell, but the reality tends to be a veneered chipboard coffin planted in a sea of marble, granite and concrete.

Colin McAteer is planning to change all that by creating a network of natural burial grounds around the country that reflect environmental concerns and a growing desire by many to make a simpler final exit. Already, his business, The Green Graveyard Company, opened Ireland’s first natural burial ground in Killane, Co Wexford, last October and plans are in place to repeat that in Cork and Galway, and possibly Dublin.