“what if we could be trees and gardens when we pass away instead of being buried or cremated?”

I had this thought when I was 12 but in 2023, I started working on a project to bring this idea to life, not knowing where it would take me. I didn’t know that only a few months later I’d be holding my grandma Christine’s hand in ICU when she died or that I’d be flung into the world of helping to organise my first funeral. I didn’t know that a year after that, I’d lose my grandma Dorothea and organise my second funeral. This was the year I realised I had a calling to do this work. 

Beyond my own experiences, I spent thousands of hours researching the death care space trying to understand why it works the way it does and interviewing our community. I was left with two questions: 

1. Why are burial and cremation our only main options? 

2. What might death care look like if we designed it around our people and planet first?

Evergrove is the culmination of this work and represents my deep belief in an emerging carbon-neutral option that honours what our bodies have always been designed to do. Terramation returns us to the earth.

It is a natural continuation of humanity's most ancient burial practices, adapted to be scalable and responsive to the realities of our modern world. Instead of 50 years in a grave, we’re transformed into soil in just 60 days. This soil can help grow new life through a range of space-efficient and regenerative memorial options, including trees, flowers and gardens. Living legacies that continue to grow, long after we’re gone.

In just 50 years, cremation went from being a fringe option to the dominant choice in most developed nations. Surveys over the past decade consistently show growing interest in environmentally friendly funeral options and I believe terramation can become the mainstream option for millennia to come. 

This work has made me realise how much time, energy and resources humanity has devoted to innovating the way we live, but much less to the way we die. My hope is that by intentionally designing death care around our people and the Earth first, our final act can give something back to both.

Aria Kapaniris

CEO & Co-Founder, Evergrove