Life Forest Tree Burial Cemetery with Mel Bennett

Death doula and funeral celebrant Jill McClennen interviews Mel Bennett, founder of Life Forest in New Hampshire, a nonprofit cemetery and public arboretum where human and pet cremated remains are buried with newly planted trees. After caring for her mother through early-onset frontal lobe dementia, Mel received her mother’s ashes in a plastic bag and box, which pushed her to create a more meaningful, healing legacy. She explains how the land is conserved, how each tree is legally protected as a burial monument, and how families get long-term, deeded access using GPS coordinates and mapping software. Mel shares the science behind their certified wool shrouds that support soil health, plus QR-code memorial markers for equal memorialization. Life Forest prioritizes accessibility, offers free burial for anyone under 20, supports unclaimed deaths, and helps expand similar cemeteries in other states.

00:00 Her Smile in Bloom

00:18 Show and Guest Intro

01:29 Mel’s Roots and Big Question

02:34 Childhood Fear and Mom’s Wisdom

04:40 Dementia Caregiving Journey

07:13 Ashes in a Bag

09:08 From Idea to Life Forest

11:04 Planting the Dogwood

13:09 Building the Arboretum

16:47 Legal Protections for Trees

18:39 Deeded Rights and GPS Mapping

25:15 Wool Shroud Science

28:59 How Families Prepare Remains

31:18 Choosing the Right Tree

32:12 Soil Sun and Pollination

35:03 Public Arboretum Access

36:20 QR Code Memorials

38:57 Pets Fees and Fairness

42:49 Accessibility and Community

43:31 Child Grief Book Project

50:49 Expanding Life Forest Model

54:40 Where to Find Life Forest

55:16 End of Life Planning Call

https://lifeforestcemetery.com/ 

Transcript

Mel: [00:00:00] The next season when the first flowers bloomed on it, I felt like I could see and feel her smile again through that. And that's the experience that I wanted others to have, and they do. We have an incredible amount of families who are so involved and so wonderful and beautiful trees. It's just wonderful.

Jill: Welcome back to seeing Death clearly. I'm your host, Jill McClennen, a death doula and funeral celebrant. Here on my show, I have conversations with guests that explore death, dying grief, and life itself, and I invite you to look at these topics a little bit differently. In this episode, I talk with Mel Bennett, after caring for her mom through early onset frontal lobe dementia, and then her mother's death.

Mel receives her ashes in a plastic bag and a cardboard box. That moment led her to create something entirely different. Mel is the founder of Life Forest, a nonprofit, cemetery, and public arboretum, where cremated remains, both human and pets are [00:01:00] buried with newly planted trees. We talk about the land itself, how each tree is legally protected as a burial monument, and how families are given long-term access.

Through GPS coordinates and deeded rights, she also shares the science behind their wool shrouds, QR code, memorial markers, and their commitment to accessibility, including free burial for anyone under 20 and support for unclaimed deaths. Thank you for joining us for this conversation. Welcome, Mel to the podcast.

Thank you so much for coming on today. Start us off, just tell us a little bit about who you are, where you live, where you came from, anything like that you wanna share. 

Mel: Thank you. I currently live in New Hampshire. I am from Massachusetts, a blue collar city called Lawrence, Massachusetts, and I'm here today because I started a cemetery with a unique design through a passion project.

A little bit about journey. Thank you. 

Jill: Yeah, I'm excited to hear all about [00:02:00] it. And actually, I used to live in Massachusetts very briefly. I lived. On the Cape Cod. 

Mel: Oh yeah. Beautiful. 

Jill: Yeah, I lived there for a summer, worked at a seafood restaurant, smelled terrible by the end of the night because I shoved a whole lot of shellfish.

But I'm real good at shucking clams nails. I love Massachusetts. I think it's beautiful. I've actually not been to New Hampshire yet, though, on my bucket list of places to get to. And when you were growing up, did you think you wanted to open a cemetery? Like how did you end up getting from where you were to the owner of a cemetery?

Mel: Wow, that's a very large answer. I did not think that I would own a cemetery. In fact, I was terrified of cemeteries growing up to the point where I couldn't look at them. If I knew they were coming up, I would try to face in another direction. I never spent time in them, so it was. Nowhere on my radar that this was going to be where I ended up dedicating [00:03:00] my life passions.

But here we are. When I was growing up, I grew up in one of those tenement tenant buildings, the three story flat roof buildings in Lawrence and across the street from my home was this like huge rolling Catholic cemetery. It just went from miles and miles and. At that time, this was the mid eighties.

There were riots in the streets of Lawrence, so it was really a lot of unrest, so to speak. My mom was very much the person of the seventies, and she really believed children need to play outside, be outside. So in order to be outside, but stay safe. From the chaos, she would bring us across the street to the big rolling cemetery, down a long path and off into the, and I remember blindly following her there [00:04:00] because it was always like a loaf of bread involved or some cheese and apple.

I just remember saying to her, mom, why are we here? This is awful. It's scary and terrible, and. I remember her describing a euphemism at the time saying, oh, you don't need to be afraid. Someday I'll die and become a tree. And I remember thinking, that's ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous because it was big caskets and.

Cut lawns and also just felt okay, she was trying to teach the child me that death is natural. Fast forward many years, I was a young mom and my mother started to present odd symptoms and it turns out that she ultimately had frontal lobe dementia. Which is the same one [00:05:00] that Bruce Willis actually has. So at the time she started showing symptoms.

She was 48, which is pretty young, and I had two little children and I became kind of part of that sandwich generation where you're taking care of little children and a parent at the same time. But her disease was so progressive and so cruel, and. Over the span of the next 10 years, she went from this really gentle, loving, intelligent person to somebody who was bedridden, staring at the ceiling, couldn't speak, walk anything, and it was so heartbreaking for me to try to raise small children and keep her safe and loved and taken care of in a way that is appropriate.

Because she obviously couldn't care for herself. I found it to be quite traumatizing, and I think [00:06:00] you probably hear this all the time in your podcasts, like how trauma bends life and presents a way that you end up in this shape and form that's so bent and stuck that when you try to untangle that. Your life becomes something different.

Your view of life becomes something different. The angle you approach life, everything becomes different. And that's how I think how it happened for me, because I often. Ask myself the question you just asked. How did I end up here? But I was not from death care. I didn't study death care. Frankly, I didn't think about death care.

It wasn't anywhere on my radar. But I do remember. Feeling so heartbroken and when she did finally pass away, which ultimately felt like such a gift for her because I knew she wouldn't wanna be trapped. She was doing yoga before people did [00:07:00] yoga. She was always swimming in the ocean. She just was a, she just incredible spirit to have her trapped in a nursing home in her late fifties staring at a ceiling.

And that smelled terrible. That just. It was just terrible, and my aunt had called me and asked me to meet her at a local Starbucks, and I thought we were getting coffee. This was maybe two weeks after she passed away, but apparently that wasn't what we were doing. I pulled into the parking lot and she handed me a plastic bag, and in that plastic bag was like a cardboard box and the box set on it.

Half the remains of Elise Dubuque. And I just remember thinking like, seriously, that's it. Like this incredible mother who spent days teaching us and building things with us, and then paid such a horrible price [00:08:00] towards the end of her life. She just gets this like a cardboard box and a plastic bag and a half of her.

I just, I couldn't, I felt angry. I felt sad. I felt like it was a continuation of loss, and ultimately I did what I think 90% of people do who are in this situation. I put her in my cabinet, in the bag, in the box, the whole thing, because I was like, I can't deal with this. There must be something better. I don't want this for her, but I couldn't think of anything.

And I knew she too wasn't really the type that loved cemeteries, but she did love nature, but also she was huge into genealogy. So cemeteries are very important when it comes to genealogy. 

Jill: Yeah, 

Mel: it's all cemetery record. Because she lived a life that was for us, it was not [00:09:00] as documented as some people who maybe publish a book.

She basically was this incredible human being that I did not want to be lost in time. She sat in my cabinet, I'd reach for the Turkey tray, and then I think, mom, I'm gonna do something. I promise, and it'll be amazing. And that's ultimately what brought me to life. Forest and creating life forest because I had seen this thing on the internet about, oh, you can buy this urn and put it a tree.

And I was like, oh, my mom could be a tree, just like she said. And then that was it. I was like, this is happening. She's gonna be a tree. None of the cemeteries would do it. They were like, yeah, that's not really like part of the design. It causes chaos and root systems aren't good for coffins and blah blah.

So I ended up thinking I could buy like this small piece of land and then I could plant her tree there, put it in conservation, like [00:10:00] all this stuff, because I didn't think I was going to, and I probably won't stay in this home forever. Like I just didn't want her just like in my yard. And that's what led us to where we are.

Because I was telling that to my co-founder John, who is a. Friend that I met through our adoption group, so we both have adopted children from China, and he was like, that's really lovely, but did you ever think like it could be more in reach if you opened it up to other people? And I thought, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

And so five years later, here we are and it's been really incredibly amazing. So. It's difficult but incredible. 

Jill: What a beautiful thing to do to honor your mother. I'm so sorry about that situation too. Dementia in general is probably my only fear trait of, but that's it. 

Mel: Every time you forget your keys, you're like, ah.

Said, I'm too, [00:11:00] so my life is over. But no, I understand that. And I remember specifically when I went to, I put myself, my mom was the first buried there. We got all our legal protections, we had rights to bury bs. It was a long process, but once that happened, I was like, obviously my mom's gonna be first and I'm gonna step through the process to see how it is and that we're what we're offering to other people and like how can we tweak it or make it better and what is it?

I wanted to experience it, and I remember choosing her tree, and I chose a dogwood tree because she was. Very frugal, not cheap. She told me that I'm not cheap or frugal. And so she would be like looking out our kitchen window washing dishes with shoulder pads that she used as sponges and staring at something.

And I remember saying to her like, wow, what are you looking at? And she'd say, I'm looking at the dogwood tree. Isn't it [00:12:00] beautiful? And I'm like, there's nothing there. There's no tree there, mom. She's, I can see the dogwood tree and I can see how lovely it would be. And I'm like, why don't you plant one?

She's, oh, babe, this is too expensive. We don't, we can't afford that. They're an expensive type of tree. And I was like, oh, she's gonna get her dogwood tree. And I remember just choosing it. And I chose one that had just incredible architecture in its branches and I planted it. And then the next season. When the first flowers bloomed on it, I kid you not.

I felt her smile again. I felt like I could see and feel her smile again through that. And that's the experience that I wanted others to have. And they do. We have an incredible amount of families who. Are so involved and so wonderful and beautiful trees. It's just wonderful. 

Jill: It sounds wonderful. And dogwoods are one of my favorite trees, partially because my grandmother loved them and she had two of them outside of her house, and I [00:13:00] used to climb them all the time when I was a kid.

Awesome. So sometimes get stuck because that's what happens. Yeah. But yes, I love dogwoods and so. You bought just like a plot of land, but there was like no trees. It was cleared out and now the only trees that are there are ones you plant or what's it look like? I'm trying to visualize this in my head.

Mel: It is beautiful and it was naturally beautiful, but it wasn't at all. Like ready for what? It had been logged about 10 years prior, so there was a lot of stumps and bramble in certain areas, and we specifically looked for land that had conservation on it, and then asked for permission instead of trying to locate land.

And then establish an easement afterwards. So we had found this piece of land that is 13 acres and it's surrounded by 86 acres of town owned conservation land run by the Conservation Commission in that [00:14:00] town of Hillsborough. And basically there was an existing trail in a gorgeous like glacial boulder, a couple of good, the boulders are just.

Fantastic is now an arboretum was actually this like pretty fantastic size of tires that people have dumped through the years. Yeah. And so not so attractive. A lot of overgrowth and bramble and tires and my daughters and I much like your kid that you wanna, Hey, you wanna help me out? Yeah. They were younger too.

We got out there and like chiseled. Tires out of the snow because we managed to actually close on the land in February, which in New Hampshire is pretty cold and icy and snowy. So we got as many tires out as we could in that, and that was 2019. It was a labor of love that I have never experienced before.

I had used like [00:15:00] some of the stomps. I was like, all right, like I didn't have equipment. I did, I had a shovel and like a pair of scissors. Like it wasn't, I'm not, this is not like this. Like I didn't commit it with, oh, we've got all this money to like make it incredible. It was okay. We managed to purchase the land.

Now let's make it happen. And so it was a lot of manual labor and the local lumberyard would allow me to take scrap for no cost and there's no power on the land. It's all like conservation land. So I was like building benches outta stumps and scrap wood. There's still there. People sit on them. I'm no Bob Bela.

I made it happen. I was out there hammering nails. Paint and just really working towards doing the best I could to make it a space that was beautiful for her because she was our first resident and I remember thinking [00:16:00] after we buried her, it was April of 2020 and then COVID hit was just coming in and I was like, oh my gosh, I think I just buried my mom alone in the woods of Hillsborough.

What have I done? I didn't know how it would go. It was just not something that people had, nobody did this thing, right? It wasn't like super well embraced by. The death care world or the local funeral directors or like really just anybody, they were like, that's a little what the round burial holes tree like.

And I worked so hard with John to make sure that we were legally recognized that we would, the conservation easements were done professionally through the correct people. And I do remember one thing that was profoundly difficult. To answer, and that was one question that we're sitting at a table of people and you got your land lawyer, you got your cemetery [00:17:00] lawyer.

You've got all these people trying to take your narrative and make it fit into the current forms of protection and law, and. One of them asked me like, how are you gonna protect people's rights to space? And I'm like, that's a really good, we'll make sure that it's a legal cemetery so that if anybody ever wants to change directions, they have to decommission it.

It's not like you can just like, oh, now we're gonna build this. 'cause it's the, there's process. And then I'm like, we can put on conservation easements so that nobody can build. And then I'm like, you know what we'll do to protect the trees. Because cemetery law in New Hampshire and other places, your burial monument is protected under cemetery law.

So let's ensure that all of our legal documents are in alignment with that stating that tree is that person's burial monument so that it's protected. Nobody can go cut it down [00:18:00] because that's punishable by cemetery law. And so all these things, and then one day I was like, wait a minute. Guys like, why I'm not gonna live to be 500 years.

This is supposed to be perpetuity forever. I'm not gonna live that long. You're not gonna live that long. I'm like, how do we ensure that they forever have rights to that space? And I'm like, why don't we change the verbiage instead of protecting people's rights to space? Why don't we give them rights to space?

Let's give them the rights to space with rights to beneficiaries that can be updated through the generations. 

Jill: Oh, interesting. Okay. 

Mel: So what I said, and this isn't really a design that's done in cemeteries, but I was very concerned because something that I did not know as, 

Jill: I don't know, 

Mel: a non death care person, civilian, whatever, is that like my mother's ashes?

Half of them, right? Were are [00:19:00] not considered a person anymore. They're considered a product. And I didn't understand the connotation of that. But what that means is there's like this kind of double-edged sword about it because you have this one. Aspect of the fact that it's not a human anymore, it's a product, not obviously in our hearts, but in the law.

And what that allows for is, oh, I could take some of the ashes and put 'em in glass, or I can put 'em on a record pair to tattoo 'em to myself or shoot them into space. Or I can memorialize any way with these ashes that suits my heart. And you can't take a human body and shoot it into space or take pieces out and make a tattoo.

You can't do that. It's illegal defamation of a corpse, right? So the fact that by law those ashes are now a product allows for a very wide range of memorialization options that [00:20:00] give people choice and time, and it's great. People should have options, but what it doesn't also does. Is, doesn't protect anybody from, if I buried somebody in my yard, obviously I'm gonna need to make sure that's recorded with the deed.

I'm gonna have to make sure that you can't just go and bury somebody in your yard, right? You need this process. And then there's protections for that space, but ashes are not protected in the same way. But you could have a scattering garden or whatever. And my assumption would be like, you have my mother there.

Like obviously it's protected. But no, it's not right in the same ways. And I'm like, well, what we need to ultimately do then is forget the fact that we're not required to do any of that stuff and just do it anyway. Okay. Let's me pretend that this is my mom because it's my mom. Also, what I realized is.

Because we did not [00:21:00] offer full body natural is that I wanted to ensure that every single person that put their pet or their parent or their tarter or their anybody would then be deeded access rights to that space forever. And I knew that if you bought a house in a beach community, there were ways to put on the deed.

You would have access right to that beach and you would have exclusive rights to utilize that beach within a set of rules. And so I asked the lawyers, I'm like, can we just use that same design and apply it to cemetery? Like how come we can't just do this? And they were like, you can, there's nothing stopping you.

It's not been done, but that doesn't mean you can't do it. And so that's exactly what we do every time we take the GPS coordinates, which I'm very proud 'cause of the first cemetery to use GPS coordinates. And now it's like a thing and I'm like, I thought of that. Nice. That was Mel from New Hampshire, [00:22:00] but Oh, I care.

I think that's super cool. You should be. I was pretty proud I came up with that because. It was at a cemetery commission meeting. And there everybody was like laughing like, are you out by the smoking section out the back? And he was like, oh, you're gonna do one of those, like F dangled, green burial, whatever.

And he is, you know, there was one and it just didn't work because nobody could find the grave again. And I was like, that's ridiculous, God. And then I did, my first thought was, that's ridiculous. And then I was like, wait a minute. Like how do you know exactly where it is? If there's no, and I'm like, wait a minute, this is like a new era we can use.

Like you can find something within a certain point of space anywhere, I'm sure plug for the book, and that's where that design came. I'm like, if we give each point in space, these GPS coordinates. Then I worked with our mapping specialist, who's a close friend of mine, and I said, Hey Colton, how come I can type in friend's and get driving directions, pay for my [00:23:00] ice cream, pick it up, learn about the company.

But I can't type in my mother's name and learn about her and all of these other things. And he is, it's a way you, that mapping is applied. So we created software that we actually work with USGS mapping systems. So within that point of space. We can have a different shape file for each layer of information so we can get map within that point of space.

The person, the burial rights to the person, their cremation number, what kind of tree it is around the time of the year, that tree, they may wanna think about replacing it because it's a living thing, but also because we tie in with the government and get shared files. That means that we know. Wait a minute, there's ledge here.

I know the soil type. I know the how close the close this water access is. So I know like safety of offset, all that stuff is held within a small point in space. [00:24:00] The information is out there, you just have to find it with the appropriate other agency. So that's what we did. We created our own software to do the ability to make sure that it is mapped in a way.

That all of the information is there utilizing technology. And then on the deed of the land, we take those coordinates and we put on the deed, this is who's buried there, and these are the beneficiaries to that space. And they have rights to access that tree or that burial spot. It's on the deed forever.

And then they can update their bene. So they, a lot of times people will put their grandchildren in there. And they're like five. But that grandchild will then have the opportunity to reassign beneficiaries as they get older. Let me tell you, when you have 250 names of access rights on your teeth, that ain't going nowhere.

They're no way they're gonna, that all of those families will be like, yeah, put in [00:25:00] a Mac. 

Jill: Oh my God. Yeah. No, for real. And that is, oh my gosh, all of that is super cool about the GPS and like how you set it all up. And so it is only cremated ashes. It's not like green burial for a full body. No. And now I actually have a question though too because I know I'd heard that the burial ash pods or whatever, that it actually doesn't really work because if you tried to put like a sapling in there like the pH or something's not correct, so like how do you figure that part out 

Mel: about?

Oh my gosh, I'm so glad you asked. So when I was, and again, like that was something I had no idea about. All I knew was I had this thing you could buy online, and when I went to get my permissions, I was working with Department of Environmentals Services, the subsurface unit, and I was like, all right, I wanna do this cemetery.

I'm gonna bury ashes. And he was okay. And he is, and then you wanna play up the trees. And I was like, yeah. And he is. It may work, it may not work, but I, what I [00:26:00] wanna know is like, how are you going to make sure that the roots are protected? And I was like, don't worry about a thing. When I bought this urn, it comes with this bag and there was this like wicked, shiny, beautiful bag in it and it had something in it, dirt or whatever.

And I was like, smell it. It's amazing. And he was like, I'm gonna need to know what's in that bag. And I was like. This is in the bag and he, yeah, that's not, no, he's, first of all, I'm gonna tell you right now, this is what I'm gonna need you to do. He's, it's not like you're telling me you're gonna bury one little bag in your yard and plant a tree.

He's, whatever. He's, what you're telling me is there is gonna be an amount of people, pets or whatever, and we don't limit like how many you can bury at once. There's no extra cost. So people do bury quite a bit. 12 sets of cremated remains at a time. Oh wow. And I'm like, bring it on. And he's, I'm gonna ask that you send that.

To be tested. And I'm not talking about the testing that you do at the local college. I'm talking about like testing of everything that's in it because it says it's proprietary, so I don't know [00:27:00] what's in it, and that's gonna cost you about $1,600. And he said, and I'm gonna tell you this again. When that comes back, if it is doing what it actually says that it's doing, then I'm gonna assign you to an OSHA representative that's gonna come out and give you all sorts of rules to follow.

Because if you're gonna handle that in mass, it could burn your hands. And what is the exposure? What is, if that's actually doing what it says it's gonna do? What's the ramifications of that? And I was like, geez, Louise, man. 

Jill: Yeah. 

Mel: I just wanna plant a tree. Like we're getting outta control. And uh, he's like, I respect what you're trying to do and I want you to be able to do it, but you need to go back to the drawing board.

So we worked with a, a university professor that specialized in soil and. All sorts of different effects of soil and sat down with him and I presented him the, he said, this is what we're dealing with. After kind of meeting with him and going back and forth, we realized he's, you know what? There's a certain amount of time that ashes [00:28:00] are higher in that pH, but over the span of three years, this is what he taught us.

Anyway, those become. So he said it's twofold, like you don't know how long the person has had them. And then there's an environment of like differential because it'll be buried. So your goal is to protect the soil around it for that span of time that those ashes will become innate. But if you use wool, so what we did is we actually have a.

Patented beautiful wool shroud that RACI came up with as wool biodegrades. It releases nitrogen, magnesium, and sulfur. Nitrogen, magnesium and sulfur actually feed the soil and feed the tree. So the ashes really do nothing as far as like there's no nutrients. There's a lot of people will be like, he's gonna be a tree.

And I'm like, he's gonna be memorialized by one and you're gonna love your tree. It's not. That person, it's your way of representing a memory of that person. So we [00:29:00] offer a wool shroud kit to all of our families, and there's directions on it, on how it's just natural wool. So it's a cream to color. And if the family wants to colorize it, they can use onions or hibiscus.

And there's certain downloadable directions on how to do that. Most families will come early and help the shroud, the ashes, so they'll sit with one of our land staff or our burial team and. We use a hundred percent natural cotton sack first. That has a cinch at the top, so we'll transfer the ashes out of its plastic bag and its Ziploc zip tie.

At the top, we'll transfer from the plastic bag into this cotton bag and then roll the cotton bag, cinch it, and then wrap. This precut soft, beautiful natural wool. It's green burial certified. Then we will go around the property and they'll pick ferns or [00:30:00] some natural, wild growing flowers, or sometimes they bring some, and oftentimes I'll offer, if my mom's tree is in bloom I'll, I'll use one of her flowers, but obviously only hers.

We allowed to touch other people's trees, but it's. It's really been lovely and super well received. They're beautiful. Our trees are doing very well, so obviously there's something to it. And then the science is listed out in the credits of the intelligent people who were part of creating it are all given credit to.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's how we do it. That's how we overcame that part of it. Oh, and it's worked. It's worked really well. So a lot of time, we have a lot of our local funeral directors. Who've come around and said, okay, wait a minute. Maybe it's okay. You've served families well, they put these on the shelf, so 

Jill: Oh, nice.

Yeah. 

Mel: We'll prepare them with a one that's made with rice, so it has the same weight as a human set of remitted remains, and so that will be able to allow the family to [00:31:00] understand this is what it's gonna look and feel like. Because if you're not from death care, you don't know it's heavier. It's heavier than I think people realize.

Even though it's in this kind of small satchel, it's quite dense. Bones are dense. Good. Yeah. So that's that. 

Jill: That's so cool. 'cause yeah, I, before I got into death care, I had heard of these pods and 

Mel: yeah, 

Jill: I love trees. Actually, my whole back is a tree tattoo. Like I love trees. Oh cool. Love trees, right? Yeah.

So right away I was like, that's what I want. I wanna become a tree. And then it was like, actually they don't work. I was like, oh damn. I was so bummed. And now of course I've learned so much over the last few years about green burial and all the different stuff. But that's really neat how you do it. And is there certain trees that people have to choose from?

Can they choose almost any kind they want? What's that 

Mel: process? Well, and obviously we're in New Hampshire, want people to love their tree. We want their tree to be successful. We have like guarantees, like we take care of [00:32:00] these trees, we're in arboretum. We're not gonna set these trees up to fail like it has to be.

So every plot. Is gonna present with a different tree type that is gonna do well. So one area of the forest that when you first come in, there's some flexibility around it. As far as the soil type, it allows for kind of fruit and flowering as well as more acidic based trees like evergreens. But then there's other areas of the forest where like.

We have this evergreen area, and that is what's there, right? So then in the natural forest, there are evergreens around, which means that the needles are falling. The soil is very, has a lot of acid in it. So you can't just plant anything there and have it. Wanna be there unless you like kind of mess with, and that's just not like where we wanna go.

Like we want the forest to define what it wants. And let me tell you, if you put something there that it [00:33:00] doesn't want. It's not happening. Yeah, it is not happening. Let the forest decide what it's gonna accept and what it's not, and just listen, learn and love the forest for what it's gonna give you. So this one area, it has to be like an evergreen type tree.

There are like winter berry trees there, uh, spruce trees, there are juniper trees. There's. Christmas trees, you know, anything beyond that. And there's a couple of small ornamental Japanese maples in the center that are protected by those evergreen trees. But if somebody came in there and it was like, I really want a dogwood, it's not, we can't do that.

And then there's another little area that is all birch in that area. And so there's a lot of birch trees. The soil is like. Complimentary to doing anything like your people who want lilac blooming, people who want certain like crab apple trees. Those kind of things do really well there. [00:34:00] And so it needs to be a certain size.

The trees need to be a certain offset from each other, and we have to respect the pollination plan for the trees in which we're planting. Somebody comes in, we have a couple of peach trees. And crab apple trees. But then there's certain breeds of crab apple that, and they're not going to produce fruit unless you have another one in vicinity.

So we plan that ahead. So like this, if somebody's, I love this burial spot because I like how the sun hits it or whatever their reasoning. But I want this sort of tree. It's, you can't have this spot and have that tree work. It's too shady for that tree, or it's too sunny for that tree, or the soil's not quite right.

So really every single spot that we have mapped out then has a list of trees that would be successful in that spot. And respect the pollination plan of the broader area. 

Jill: Hmm. 

Mel: And that's defined through the Department of Agriculture. We work with them quite a bit. 

Jill: So there's a whole lot that goes into this that's not just [00:35:00] about burials like that you gotta have a lot of knowledge about.

And so you said it's an arboretum, like if somebody is traveling through, can they stop and like help? Oh 

Mel: yeah. It's a public spa. It's a cemetery. It's the municipal approved as a cemetery. It's a municipal based, we. Like file all barriers with the municipality. It is completely open to the public. It is a public easement.

It's an arboretum. We are level one. We're working towards level two next year. We're registered through the Morton Arboretum and actually we work with interns quite a bit and just whatever areas they're studying. But our current intern is doing her PhD from John Hopkins University. She's a smart young lady and she's doing it on life for us, which I'm like.

Okay, but she actually worked for the Morton Arboretum, and so she's been very helpful. Never underestimate the incredible brilliance of a young person who is passionate about something. They have [00:36:00] brought me so far in my learning journeys and just either trying to help them discover the answer to the question.

Or providing me answers to the question. So yeah, public art arboretum, our trees are now thanks to Sasha, all labeled appropriately and it's great. So. 

Jill: Is there like a marker that, not even a tombstone, but like something that marked who the person is, all that kind of stuff. 

Mel: This is how we started. We were the first cemetery to use QR codes in order to memorialize.

So what we did is we used, we utilized like this, the simple stakes that you would use in any sort of outdoor environment, right? Like any sort of those, just little. Metal stakes and there's an aluminum sign and it has a QR code on one side that leads to a dedicated Life Forest memorial page we currently use Ever Loved.

We used to do it ourselves, but it was so much upkeep [00:37:00] and we didn't have the functionality in our website that we wanted our families to have as far as being able to upload different videos, pictures, so we just link that to their own little page. On. They have complete customization. And then on the other side, oftentimes people will put a photo or dates, so the name and dates are on the other little side, and it's been wonderful.

They've really withstood and people can go out then and learn more about who's buried there. It was really important to me that equal memorialization was presented. Because I just remember walking through those big cemeteries and seeing like those giant angels and then 10 feet away, there's a stone that's like this big and it's somebody's child.

And I felt just because somebody could afford that giant sculpture, does that mean they love that person more? I'm not into that whole thing. So basically what I love [00:38:00] about the technology of this is that it costs nothing to create a QR code. Right? Like we can do that for our families. These aluminum signs are very reachable.

We don't charge for that. The website, there's a hundred million free memorialization websites out there that you can just link to, right? So they can use the one that we offer to them. There's no cost to them to do that. If they wanna work with, ever love to upgrade the services or whatever, of course they can, but it's not required.

And this offers equal amounts of photos, pic, anything. In a way that is fair, right? So it's equal memorialization. It doesn't cost a cemetery to do this. It's makes sense to me to allow people to be able to have control over that memorialization and to do so in a way that's cost efficient. So that's what we do.

We have these little. Signs with their QR codes, and it's been great. All of it has been such a learning [00:39:00] process. Even like people will say, I wanna bury this person. We also deed the pets. We treat pets equal to humans. They're buried together and we memorialize them together and we record them together so there's no sneaking of your pets.

It's totally legal to bury with your pets in New Hampshire. I was like, why aren't people doing this? So people often come, not because they care about the tree, but they wanna just be with their pets. And so when people come to bury, they're paying for space. So I'm like, just utilize your space. Bury as many sets of cremated remains as you want, and there's no extra fee.

Why would people charge extra for that? I don't even understand it. I'm like, oh, you wanna bury a patty? That's another $500. What? And the other thing is like opening and closing fees. Come on. What are you supposed to do? It has to be open. You can't, you're gonna charge them to open the hole when it's required to bury somebody.

That's like baloney. [00:40:00] So there's no opening fees, there's no closing fees. We've had one person came with, she was buried, she buried her husband with 12 of his dogs and had this huge door and it had a certain particular order. And we are like, alright, we can do this. So a lot of people also get these small urns and they don't wanna keep those forever a bad generational gift.

And so I'm like. Let's put 'em in with your people and the how much extra? It's no extra. This whole thing. I don't know. I guess it's because I'm not from death care and it doesn't make me very popular death care either to be like, I'm not charging people for that. You're gonna, oh, what about perpetual care fees?

I'm like to be in a natural cemetery. 

Jill: Yeah. 

Mel: It doesn't cost a forest to grow. Yeah. Obviously there's upkeep, but that's what you commit to when you create a space that's open to the public. So all that stuff has been pretty well received by people [00:41:00] and we don't charge for anybody who passes away. That's under 20, so we'll never charge to bury a child.

It's not income dependent. It's if you lose a child and they're up to the age of 20 years old, that's still a child. There's no charge for that. We have a guardianship program that basically anybody that dies in the care of a public guardian and is not claimed. We offer single burial plots. There's no mass burials.

Everybody gets their own plot, and we allow that at sliding fee scale or no cost at all. So anybody, these guardians or funeral directors. Want a place and want it deed recorded because they get deed recorded, which means that families can find them again. People can type in any name of anybody buried at Life Forest.

It comes up in public record 'cause they're on our deed and they could say we actually had, so we buried quite a few of people that were died in the care of a public guardian. [00:42:00] And we'll get a call like six months later. My person is at the, what is Life Forest like? They can't find them because there's one point of contact and they weren't.

These people are loved. It's just the one point of contact that Guardian had. Didn't step up to the responsibility. That just leaves, like normally they go and they scatter or whatever and they try to do the right things, but you can't find them again. People don't even know they died. We have to bear the bad news.

But it's been a really rewarding in the sense that people will then come and they'll, people have reserved spots next to their person. It's called gift economy, and that's how we grow. We grow through gift economy. Just give as much as we can until it just is received and then they give and it's just great.

So 

Jill: that's so beautiful. 

Mel: We try to make sure that the land is an interactive place, right? We have a phone of the wind, we put one on in 2020, and we just finally did the install That [00:43:00] is wheelchair accessible. We follow all the USDA guidelines around forest accessibility, the entire land. There will no be, no burials in an area of land that's not accessible by wheelchair or so.

Everything needs to be accessible, but also we have a little free library. I really don't want children to be afraid to be there, so we'll do events, children's reading events, or the older kids will meet with the younger kids and make fairy castles and things like that. A lot of events, we actually finally.

This has been in the works for a couple of years now, published this book. This was written by Child Grief Experts, and what it does is it like takes the journey of a young chipmunk and walks through the stages of grief. Explains the stages of grief through woodland animals. 

Jill: Here 

Mel: he's experiencing a little bit of depression, and so the moose is carrying him along a little bit.

Like why am I so tired? And they all meet together and [00:44:00] form a little community of support. So each of these children that are at part of our families, I finally now have a little thing to offer them. It's so hard for these kids and. In New Hampshire, most likely we have an extreme societal devastating problem of death by suicide and over and overdose and addiction disease.

And it's so upsettingly sad, and it's the generation, it's like a lot of 30 to 50, which is leaving behind young children. And so I saw a need for these children to have better support. Because you're having a spouse now that's left with these little children. It's a, it's like a multi-generational devastation.

Their parents are still alive. Their parent is burying a child, their spouse is burying somebody at 30, 40 years old. The five and 6-year-old kids are there trying to help plant the tree. And so I wanted to [00:45:00] make sure that no matter anybody could have this book at no cost. Right? We're a nonprofit. The idea is educational support.

So this book. We give it away to any of the families. It's always available in our free library. If anybody goes to the land, they can just take it if they need it. So there's a storybook, but then at the end of the storybook, there is a work through book, and that work through book is created for adults in their lives to help them get through.

What they're doing and there's additional resources. So this work through book is available at no cost through a download on our website. And what I did is I made sure that it, there was nothing in color because color pages cost a lot of money to print. 

Jill: Yeah, 

Mel: and so I wanted to make sure that if there was a teacher who had a student, maybe that lost somebody or something devastated happened within a school district, which happens a lot.

Unfortunately. I wanted [00:46:00] anybody to be able to go up to the website, download this work through Brooke, which is not dependent on the story they compliment, but you don't to benefit from this. You don't need to buy this and print it up for all the kids, so any of the children. Whatever their background is, whatever their financial situation is, has access to this in a way that makes sense.

So that's the original reason that I called you is I just wanna make sure that the kids that need it, which is there's a lot of them right now, have it. So there's journal pages. It's incredibly well done. I did not write it. I did not write this book. I just. Begged some local child advocates who are, well, they do this for a living.

They help children through grief. Please, we need this. And they did. They wrote it. And they wrote it in a way that is beautiful and makes sense and it doesn't hide what's going on. It's pretty [00:47:00] direct, but in a way that's age appropriate. So anyway, I am so proud of this. And I'm so thankful to the authors and the illustrators of this book, and I just really wanna get it into the hands of the kids that need it.

So I'm very passionate about that right now. So that's where we're at. Let's get it out there. 

Jill: And if somebody wanted to buy the book itself, they can purchase the full book if they want. But the workbook part, we can go to your website and just download that. 

Yeah, 

Mel: and maybe you can buy it separately too.

I think it's $4 or something. It's not expensive. I created Lifeforce Press a couple of years ago, so we have our own little independent press Lifeforce does so that I can. Print these educational materials and get them up into local bookstores. So it's, that information's accessible to people. Like you could order it on Amazon or you can preferably go to the small bookstore that you like downtown and order it, and that's, it's anywhere you buy a book, [00:48:00] so it's out there.

We put no up cost on it. Basically, there's no like financial return to Lifeforce for this, which is great. It's not what it's about. So that hopefully keeps the book more price effective for people to be able to buy. But if you don't wanna buy it, you don't have to buy it. You could call us and we'll send it to you, or you can download it from the website for no cost.

Jill: Oh, that's so nice. It's challenging to work with children around grief. Right. We don't do a good job of it. So many people just wanna act like it doesn't matter to kids. Like they don't notice that grandpa's gone, or God forbid, that their parent's gone. But they do and they grieve and they need to be talked to in an open and honest way.

But we're so uncomfortable we can't talk to each other as adults about death and grief properly. Once it gets to kids, it is harder. So resources are really helpful and I'm sure that workbook. Getting that into the hands of people can be so helpful [00:49:00] for parents and for working with the children. 

Mel: I think one of the biggest things I learned from the grief experts.

Was that sometimes what happens is that we as adults need to be educated in natural responses of children because it's not the same and necessarily as what you're gonna see in an adult. You'll be like, they don't even care. Like they don't process the same, they don't react the same. And that can. Form upset for the adults in their lives.

We have these preconceived notions of what somebody should behave like, and if a child doesn't fit into that preconceived notion, it can cause tension within a family. So now you're dealing with this epic loss and then this layer of tension, and that is added to the grief. And so there are educational resources for the adults within this book to understand.

Like what is normal? What is natural? What's, what do you expect out of a child? Because we [00:50:00] want to support the children, but in order to support the children, you have to support the adult as well. It, it's a really amazing book and I just hope that it helps and I think it does. I'll go to a burial and I bring the kid to the library.

I always show the kids. Who are bearing a parent. My mom's tree. I'm like, my mom and your dad are gonna be together here and they're gonna look out for each other, and I want you to know there's a library and some other kids left you a book and look, it's here for you now and you can take it home. And they're always engaged in that.

And then they'll show their friends and you can take any book you want. It's a free library. We have an amazing amount of family members. It's always stocked, but there's always that book in it as well. 

Jill: So beautiful. We are at the end of our time. This was so great, Matthew. You welcome. I really You're welcome.

Enjoyed hearing your whole story and all about the cemetery, but why don't you tell people, so there's actually two cemeteries you said, not just the one. 

Mel: Yeah, so what we have [00:51:00] is the Cemetery Life Forest. The cemetery is a nonprofit. It's run by the nonprofit organization of families who have plots there.

So the board members either have a plot for themselves or a loved one, and we have a cemetery management company that we formed called Life Forest Cemetery. So like our branding, our software, we realized that. It was quite a thing to come up with. And there's a lot of people out there that may have passion to open a cemetery, but not the financial reach, and we already have it.

So what we've been doing is working with people who may have land, they wanna conserve. Or in the death care space, but don't have the financial reach to open a whole cemetery because it's even just the software is ridiculous, like it's so expensive. So we take him under our umbrella and help them get up and started.

And so that is the case with Maine. We worked with two women who own. A farm Whistle Ridge Farm and there was a large parcel of [00:52:00] land they wanted to protect. So we worked with them to establish Life Forest Whistle Ridge that we do. We answer the phone for them, we map it all for them, we do everything and then they have to be there to meet the families, dig the holes.

So anything like that's on the land is the responsibility of Whistle Ridge Cemetery and Life Forest is helping them with all of the other support and that's a way that we can grow the Life Forest Mission. Without like ever having to take any sort of like venture capital money or anything like that, because it's just not really in alignment with how we wanna grow.

Jill: So if somebody listening is like, Hey, 

Mel: I want 

Jill: some land. 

Mel: Yeah, we're actually, we're working with three or four other states right now. We are. We're ready for it. 

Jill: Oh, 

Mel: that's 

Jill: so exciting. I love it. 

Mel: Yes. I have now become an expert at setting up cemeteries. 

Jill: Wonderful. 

Mel: Don't ask me to write a children's book.

Jill: That's all right. That's what other people are for. 

Mel: Yeah. But [00:53:00] I can, I have the knowledge and the resources at this point of knowledge to work with any state and set up a legal cemetery and help people to do that without the incredible amount of startup costs. So 

Jill: that's wonderful. Yeah, because yeah, it's definitely, I'm sure.

I'm in New Jersey where it's so densely populated. There's not a whole lot, especially where I'm at. Not a whole lot of land laying around. 

Mel: Yeah. 

Jill: But I know that there's people further south where I grew up, where there's still farmland and they don't really wanna farm the land anymore. What do you do with the land now?

Mel: Yeah. And I think these farmers don't want like housing developments in them, which is like the alternative, right? Yeah. They don't wanna see that happen. And so this is a way to preserve that land and to. Be able to not have it become a housing development. And those landowners, depending what state it is and what the land the laws are for cemetery law, it can give them that passive income to help preserve the land [00:54:00] without having to build McMansions.

Jill: Yeah. 'cause that is what's happening to a lot of the farmland. It's turning into housing developments. It is what it is. And 

Mel: so be a life forest instead. 

Jill: Yeah. For real. I know. I'm already thinking. I'm like, who? 

Mel: Well, we support full body natural. We just don't offer it in New Hampshire. 

Jill: Okay. I know. 

Mel: When you're not from death care, that's really intimidating.

Jill: That's why there's different options for everybody, 

Mel: right? Yes. We have, there's plenty of other options for full body, natural close by, so we always just refer when somebody's looking for that. We certainly just send them to who can take care of them in the way they wish. 

Jill: Yeah, yeah. We have a couple near me as well.

Mel: I would like to see that. 

Jill: Can you just tell me though, your website, your social media, again, I'll put links in the show notes so people can find somebody wants to reach out to or learn more. Where should they go? 

Mel: Okay, so our website is the life forest.com, and then it's the same for our social media profiles.

Wherever we [00:55:00] have a YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, all Life Forest, come find us at Life Forest. 

Jill: Wonderful. Thank you so much, Mel. This was really interesting. I appreciate you taking your time out and yeah, thank you. You're welcome. 

Mel: Thank you. 

Jill: If you've been listening to my podcast for a while and you hear me and my guests talk over and over about how important it is to create a plan for the end of life and to have the conversations with your loved ones about what's important to you, and you're thinking, okay, maybe it's time.

Maybe I should actually sit down and figure this out. Instead of just hoping it all works out later, I get it. These conversations can feel overwhelming or scary or just like something you'll deal with another day, but you don't have to do it alone. If you wanna help creating an end of life care plan for yourself or for someone you love, maybe if you're aging parents, a spouse, whoever it is in your life.

You can book a complimentary 30 minute call with me, and we'll just talk. We'll get clear on what's going on for you and what the next right steps might be. There's no pressure. Just [00:56:00] support the links in the show notes. Whenever you're ready. And if this episode made you think of someone, a sibling, a friend, or another caregiver, feel free to share it with them.

Sometimes these conversations are easier to start when someone else opens the door. First, thank you for being here. The fact that you're even willing to listen to this kind of conversation means a lot.