Return to Nature.
Bringing Natural Burial to the Seacoast.
Welcome to
Lotus & Lavender Natural Burial.
We’re a 501(c)(13), cemetery-specific nonprofit, working to bring natural burial options to the Seacoast. While we don’t offer burial yet, our mission is underway: educating communities, forming partnerships, and laying the groundwork for future natural burial cemeteries. Our approach is simple and respectful—honoring all end-of-life choices while expanding access to natural burial.
What is Natural Burial?
For most of human history, bodies were placed in the ground to decompose naturally - without anything that impedes nature’s process. Natural burial, also called green burial, restores that tradition with an easily biodegradable container like a pine coffin or cotton shroud, no embalming and no concrete vaults.
A natural burial cemetery feels like a place you would take a walk in the woods. Headstones are flush with the ground, mowing is minimized and there is no pesticide use. This allows for a peaceful resting place in nature and a process that nourishes the land and honors the cycle of life.
Photos courtesy of Bluestem Conservation Cemetery, NC and Ramsey Creek Preserve, SC.
We are seeking:
3+ acres
Preferably mostly cleared land with minimal wetlands
Within 45 minutes of Portsmouth
A gift, sale or long-term lease of land to Lotus & Lavender has many advantages. Get in touch to have a confidential conversation.
Here are ways you can help bring natural burial to the Seacoast!
All donations go directly to our Land Acquisition Fund and once that’s fulfilled, towards making the land operational.
CONNECT
Do you have land? Or know someone who does? Maybe you know a realtor or friend who would be interested in supporting our land search. Attend one of our talks too - bring a friend!
VOLUNTEER
There are many ways to volunteer - including lending your talents, collaborating, and offering up speaking venues and other educational opportunities.
DONATE
JOIN
Subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date on our progress and learn about news, events, education, ongoing resources and volunteer opportunities as they develop.
Once established, we envision that Lotus & Lavender burials will occur principally in wildflower meadows with some woodland interments. Partnering with local artisans for simple pine coffins, burial shrouds and wicker caskets, burials will incorporate live and dried flowers whenever possible, and graves will be GPS-tracked.
Memorialization options will include headstones flush with the ground, native plantings, website memorial page, volunteering and/or cemetery enhancements such as benches.
We plan to host nature-based and end of life community events, such as bird watching, grief workshops and memorial events.
