The Sanctuary
Conserving natural lands as your lasting legacy.
The conservation cemetery will be a place for green burials while also being managed as a nature sanctuary. This beautiful, natural area will be preserved forever in honor of those who are laid to rest within its grounds.
Creating a Place of Remembrance
Native wildflowers, grasses, and trees will be planted, protected, and maintained forever. Natural surface paths will meander through the cemetery’s grasslands. A gathering space will be available for services as well as for community programs.
Burial plots will be widely spaced, with graves located in deference to the ecological features of the land. A memorial wall will honor all who are buried in the conservation cemetery. Formal grave markers will not be used. Visitors will be able to easily locate a burial site through our interactive preserve map and perpetual memorial pages.
Green Burials
All burials in the conservation cemetery will be prepared in accordance with the Green Burial Council natural methods for body preparation and interment, allowing all who are laid to rest to be surrounded by life as they return peacefully to the earth.
Cremated remains may also be interred at the sanctuary.
Benefits
The Nature’s Burial grounds will provide vital services for both people and the planet. These include:
the conservation of biodiversity;
the creation of wild and beautiful open lands;
carbon sequestration and improved air quality;
improved water quality through natural filtration;
flood mitigation benefits through lands that absorb, slow down, and store stormwater;
an opportunity to appreciate nature among all who visit the sanctuary.
The Coastal Prairie: an imperiled ecosystem
Today, the tallgrass prairie is the most endangered ecosystem in the world. It is estimated that less than 1% of the original 20 million acres of tallgrass prairie within Texas remains, with another 15 to 20% in a degraded but restorable state. These ranges apply to the Katy Prairie as well.
The Gulf Coast of Texas was once covered by unending swaths of prairies and marshes extending out to the Gulf of Mexico. When European settlers began arriving in the 1820s, over 90% of the state was rangeland. These lands were productive for agriculture and then ripe for industrial and urban development as populations grew.
The Greater Houston region is no exception to this evolution. Our relatively young city has experienced rapid change and growth, resulting in the conversion of prairies, farms, and fields into strip malls, offices, parking lots, and proliferating suburbs, consuming thousands of acres of the coastal prairie.
The Nature’s Burial conservation cemetery grounds will be restored to mimic the coastal prairie ecosystem that once covered these lands.
In an effort to safeguard this important ecosystem, the Coastal Prairie Conservancy works toward four primary goals:
increasing protected coastal prairie lands;
restoring and enhancing conserved lands;
collaborating with other organizations to ensure a vibrant and resilient community;
connecting the public with nature through public access, educational programming, and outreach.
Nature’s Burial is now a vital part of our mission across all four of these goals.
The land that will be protected as the sanctuary was once virgin prairie. For the last several hundred years, it has been used by several generations of Texans for cattle grazing and crop production. Intensive land use depleted the soils. Nonnative forage grasses and crops came to dominate the landscape. Natural fires and nutrient cycles were suppressed. Native wildlife species disappeared.
The grounds will also provide a publicly-accessible nature preserve as well as flood protection for our growing community.
Once the land is protected, native grasses and wildflowers will be reestablished on the grounds. These restored acres will support unparalleled plant diversity and will provide vital nesting and stopover habitat for migratory birds.
The work we embark on will be a grassroots effort in the truest sense of the term. Seventy-five to eighty percent of the biomass in a prairie exists underground. This work will take time.
We look forward to hosting community planting events in the memorial grasslands that will define the cemetery. Families are welcome to participate, inviting life to return and surround their loved one’s place of rest.