About Evergrove
Evergrove’s purpose is to help write stories that end with hope, meaning and dignity. We envision a future where we remember our loved ones through the natural world around us. We aim to be one of the first Australian terramation providers.
We were the first NSW based terramation venture, founded in 2023, and have been working hard to research, advocate and build the partnerships necessary to bring terramation to Australia and hopefully across the world.
Our human-centred design approach means we design with community rather than for them, informed by extensive research, engagement and co-design wherever possible. Since 2023, we have been listening to a diverse range of voices across industry, government, faith and cultural groups to inform what the future of terramation should look like in Australia and beyond.
Evergrove is adopting a social enterprise model to put our people and planet first. We will reinvest the majority of profits back into furthering our mission, and are in the process of obtaining emerging social enterprise certification through the Social Enterprise Council of NSW & ACT. We are a pre-revenue, pre-investment venture seeking capital once legalisation of terramation hopefully occurs in NSW toward the end of 2026. If this happens, we hope to be operational by 2031, though that is only an estimate at this stage.
Our team
Aria Kapaniris
Founder & CEO
Aria is a UTS alumna bringing nearly 10 years of business experience in strategy and delivery across customer strategy and research, program management, and major infrastructure procurement and contracting. She is a passionate systems thinker, service and human-centred designer who has delivered Evergrove’s work to date, inspired by personal experiences with loss.
Luke Hamilton
Terramation Operations Manager
Luke brings 15 years of experience advancing sustainable circular technologies, including pioneering some of NSW’s FOGO programs and running CSIRO scientific trials on compostable materials. Luke has been with Evergrove since our inception in 2023 in an advisory capacity and will lead terramation operations once we begin scoping construction.
Our founder’s story
“What if we could be trees when we pass away?”
I had this thought when I was 12, but in 2023 I started working on a project to bring this idea to life after my grandma Christine survived a heart attack, not knowing where it would take me. I didn’t know that only a few months later I’d be holding her hand in ICU when she passed away, or that I’d help to organise my first funeral.
A year later I lost my grandma Dorothea and organised my second funeral. A year and a half after that, my beautiful mum Theresa was very suddenly diagnosed with an aggressive lung cancer and we lost her only 8 weeks later. She was only 52. I helped her have a peaceful death at home, surrounded by family, and organised my third funeral. Mum had many talents, but her greatest was music. To honour her life, we released her song that she composed, performed and sung in collaboration with Chris O’Brien Lifehouse to support lung and brain cancer research, particularly the Richard Scolyer Chair. If you’re able, I’d love you to listen and donate toward accelerating cancer research.
I’m still making sense of the last few years and I can’t believe mum is gone, but I know I have a calling to do this work. I started Evergrove because I believe we can do better in how we honour the enormity of a life, and make that experience feel more hopeful for everyone.
Mum loved orchids and gardening, so when she made it out of hospital to come home we bought her a beautiful potted orchid that was in her room until the very end. Her orchid now lives on my balcony, and whenever I’m out there watering our plants, I feel her. Terramation gives us an opportunity to create a living legacy that heals something in ourselves and the natural world, which mum made sure I understood we are part of. She was always deeply supportive of my work, and had it been available in time, terramation is what she would have chosen.
I dedicate this work to all those I’ve lost, but especially mum and my grandmothers. Without you, Evergrove wouldn’t exist. As for me, I hope my story ends as a very old, happy lady who becomes a Moreton Bay Fig Tree.
— Aria