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Why Choose a Memorial Garden Cemetery

Rest Ashured Scatter Garden with Proverbs 3:5-6

After a loved one has been cremated, many people struggle to decide what to do with the remains. Some people keep the ashes with them for a time before looking for a place to scatter the ashes. If the deceased didn’t specify details, a memorial garden cemetery becomes a beautiful final resting place. 

These gardens create a nature-inspired setting for memorials. Often, they include a memorial marker as a permanent record of the life that was lived. Also, it sets aside a location for the family to visit. 

A thoughtfully-chosen location honors the loved one’s life while also allowing closure for those who remain behind.

Table of Contents

What is a Memorial Garden?
Types of Memorial Gardens
Ideas to Honor Your Loved One

In comparison to traditional cemeteries, memorial gardens feel lighter and more joyful. These settings are serene and reverent, yet enhanced by the beauty of nature. Birds tweet, squirrels scamper, and the wind rustles through trees. Scattering in such a beautiful place connects the grieving process with deeper meaning.

Symbolically, scattering ashes in a memorial garden can represent a number of ideas:

  • Releasing your grief
  • Letting go of your loved one
  • Liberation from sickness and pain
  • Illustrating a “free spirit” personality
  • Allowing a soul to fly away
  • Joining the circle of life
  • Connecting with a place

When you choose the right memorial garden, scattering the ashes feels natural and right. The release creates a sense of peace and a beautiful moment of honor.

What is a Memorial Garden Cemetery?

Simply put, a memorial garden is a place where you can lay your loved one’s remains to rest. These curated gardens feature well-tended trees, flowers, and greenery to inspire remembrance and encourage reflection. 

Most of the time, memorial gardens are less formal than traditional burial grounds. They may be centered around specially-landscaped areas, like ash scattering gardens or memorial trees. Typically, these settings provide a marker as part of the scattering services. If you research memorial gardens, you’ll find that each location has unique views and memorials to remember your loved one.

Types of Memorial Gardens

Sometimes, this is a traditional cemetery with modern gardening elements. Many funeral homes have moved away from using the word cemetery and refer to burial grounds as a memorial garden. In keeping with the name, they incorporate lovely landscape elements. These locations may offer a mix of traditional burial plots, scattering areas, or columbariums. 

In other cases, memorial gardens are private locations with unique memorial areas like scattering gardens, memorial trees, or even benches. Similar to cemeteries, these landscapes are curated to memorialize those who were laid to rest. 

Ideas to Honor your Loved One

With cremated remains, you don’t have to make up your mind about scattering at the time of the loss. In fact, many people hold onto the ashes for a while as they grieve. Then, when they feel ready, they inter the ashes somewhere they can visit and remember.

At Rest Ashured, we’ve created a garden with several ways to memorialize loved ones. 

Rock Scatter Garden

Our Scattering Garden

Our scattering garden is a landscaped area with river rocks. The surrounding property has been landscaped to enhance the breathtaking views of the Blue Ridge Mountains and portions of the James River. 

We scatter ashes over this special area and place a memorial stone to mark the location. 

Memorial garden with planted trees

Memorial Tree Dedication

For our Memorial Trees we honor loved ones throughout the planning process. We will respectfully scatter the ashes with the roots. Then we place an engraved and personalized memorial stone beneath it. 

Scatter Ashes Together

Finally, we allow people to scatter pairs of ashes together. For example, a husband and wife’s ashes can be sent together to be scattered at the same time. We offer this service for both the scatter garden and the memorial trees. 

Scattering Cremation Ashes with Rest Ashured 

When you’re finished with your goodbyes, Rest Ashured provides a permanent and serene resting place for your loved one’s remains. The process is simple, and we’re here to help you. 

Select a Scattering Service

Our cremation scattering areas create peaceful, meaningful places for you to put your loved one’s ashes to rest. Our property contains a mountaintop scatter garden, and memorial trees.  You can choose either of these services through our website.

Whichever you choose, you can be confident that we have properly registered our property for cremation ash scattering. We have also set up long-term arrangements to ensure the sanctity of the location.

Sending Your Ashes

When you send the ashes, we help you through the process. We’ll send you a package with all the necessary packing materials. This includes the appropriate boxes, labels, tape, and simple shipping instructions. 

Then, you ship the package to us through your local post office. (We also offer personal pickup for certain areas.)

Visiting Your Memorial

Our property is closed to visitors to protect the naturally lovely location. However, we hold two Days of Celebration each year. You’ll be notified by email prior to the event. 

On these days, we encourage friends and family members to visit, remember, and reflect. You can plan to visit your loved one’s marker in the memorial garden cemetery.

Get in Touch with Us

We are honored by each scattering, and we strive to help people say goodbye with dignity and respect. If you have any questions about our services, please get in touch with us. Call 434-534-4007 or email us at info@restashured.com.

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Memorial Stones and Moving Forward

River Rock Memorial Stone

It may sound silly that a personalized memorial stone could help someone move beyond their grief from the loss of a loved one, but it’s true. One of the most difficult stages of grief is the last – acceptance and moving on. Many people feel that moving on means they are forgetting, or that their loved one didn’t matter as much as they really did. Looking at someone else going through the cycle, it seems irrational to think such a way, but to the person going through it, nothing can be further from the truth.

So where do memorial stones come in? They are a tangible way to express your love and devotion for all of time, and they can be used in a multitude of ways, depending on your preference. Memorial stones can be personalized with names, dates, quotes, poems – really anything you can imagine. They serve as a perfect memorial to a departed loved one.

Memorial Garden Stones

Memorial Rock Example
Engraved Memorial Stones

For those who are afraid of “forgetting-to-remember,” the memorial garden stones can serve as both a memorial and a remembrance. Placed in your garden or walkway by your home, a personalized memorial stone can bring sweet memories of times past and reassurance in yourself that you are going to make it. Every time you walk past it, it gets a little bit easier. You can choose from any number of custom engraved memorial decorative stones to suit your specific needs and location.

Scattering Garden Memorial Stones

While some want their memorial stone to stay close by, where they can see it daily, others wish to use the stone as a permanent marker for where their loved one’s ashes lay. This is often done in what’s called a scatter garden, like Rest Ashured, where the ashes are released. A cremation scattering garden is what it’s also called, and this is a beautifully decorated area where you can scatter the ashes in a calm, tranquil setting that is also pleasant to visit. Even if a return visit never happens, placing a memorial garden stone there will always serve as a memorial and marker for your loved one.

Pet Memorial Stones

Pet Memorial Rock Example

We all feel like our pets are part of our family, and when the time comes to separate, it isn’t easy. We can commemorate them in the same way we do other family members. Personalized memorial stones for pets is a very popular service. There are dog memorial stones, cat memorial stones, even pet memorial garden stones. You can celebrate your pet the way you want to, and leave a place to visit or create your own engraved memorial stones to take home.

Memorial Stones as Markers for Memory Trees

Often, a flowering or large evergreen tree is planted in honor of a late loved one. Some choose to scatter ashes with the tree, while others just want to plant a tree in memory of a loved one as a living tribute that will live on. A natural, engraved memorial stone looks lovely lying at the mulched base of tree. This tree could be on your own property, or planted on land dedicated to preserving the tree for all time.

Rest Ashured Ash Scattering offers such a place. When you are planting a tree in memory of someone, you want to see that evergreen tree grow year after year, where it can offer a real sense of peace and healing for family or friends left behind to visit.

Get Your Own Personalized Memorial Stones

Memorial stones are a great way to remember your loved ones for years to come. Whether you place them in a scattering garden, at your home, or even under your own evergreen tree, personalized memorial stones and personalized pet memorial stones offer a lasting way to commemorate loved ones and give you a place for them…and for you.

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