The story of Vermont Forest Cemetery.
In 2015, the state of Vermont passed a law legalizing natural burial grounds. However, it still required a minimum burial depth of five feet, which means the law hadn’t actually made it possible for the best practices of natural burial to be used. Our founder, Michelle Acciavatti, along with Jennifer Whitman and other natural burial advocates, took on the challenge of amending the burial depth law. Working with experts in natural burial, soil science, geology, wildlife biology, and septic design, she wrote a bill to amend the burial depth to 3.5 feet. She spent several weeks discussing the bill with legislators and traveled throughout the state to listen to people’s concerns and provide education. The bill passed unanimously and became Vermont state law in 2017.
In natural burial, we dig no deeper than four feet so that the body and its bacteria can remain in contact with the active layers of the soil, where oxygen, moisture, warmth, and soil bacteria aid in recycling the body’s elements. The miraculous mycorrhizal network, made up of fungi in a mutually-supportive relationship with the roots of growing things, absorbs, filters, and transports these elements as nutrients for the forest. In natural burial, the body is not just figuratively, but also literally returned to the Earth.
The body is bathed, often by loved ones, and kept cool until the time of interment, but there’s no embalming or other preservation. The body is placed in a biodegradable container made of natural materials—like a pine coffin, a willow basket, or a linen shroud—and lowered gently to rest on pine boughs, leaves, and other green matter. It’s in this way that burial helps sequester carbon rather than adding more to the atmosphere. The land itself is managed with ecologically sound principles in accordance with best practices for conservation burial as defined by the Green Burial Council, the Conservation Burial Alliance, and our own research.
Founder and Head Cemeterian
Michelle Hogle Acciavatti, M.Sci., is a deathworker, a storyteller and a mother. She has trained as a funeral director, an advance care planner, a death doula & educator, a home funeral and pregnancy loss guide, a natural burial advocate & educator, a master naturalist, a writer, a neuroscientist, and an ethicist. In 2016, she created Green Mountain Funeral Alternatives to help people preparing for the end of life, designing funeral services, caring for their own dead, and exploring natural burial options. In 2023, she founded Vermont Forest Cemetery, the first natural burial ground in the state. She is a founding member of The Collective for Radical Death Studies and board member emeritus of the National Home Funeral Alliance.
As a deathworker, Michelle believes that traditional ways of caring for our our dead and natural burial are acts of love and service that can help mourners through their grief experiences, reconnect human and natural communities, and redefine the way we approach not only deathcare but also environmental conservation.
Michelle has practiced death work with people of all ages, including death during pregnancy. Her work has found her in settings as varied as the forest, Boston Children’s Hospital, The Vermont State House, people’s own living rooms as well as the traditional funeral home. She is the co-author of The National Home Funeral Alliance’s The Home Funeral Guidebook and “When Life is Short,” a guidebook for infant and child deathcare coauthored with Toula Sarotis. Her work at Vermont Forest Cemetery centers on restoring hands-on deathcare traditions and preserving the stories of the people buried there, as well as understanding the impact of natural burial from the soil to the
canopy and stewarding the forest through a changing climate.
michelle@memorial.eco
(802) 234-1747
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