Abstract:
Trees are increasingly part of meaning-making processes in Dutch funerary and memorial culture. So-called memorial trees are offered by memorial forests, natural burial grounds and arborists. This study deals with the question of why bereaved people in the Netherlands choose to plant a tree for a
deceased person and how the bereaved relate to trees as memorial objects. A qualitative and explorative study was conducted via an online questionnaire among 90 Dutch bereaved people. I argue that (1) the respondents’ motivations, beliefs and practices might indicate strategies to enable
the dead to symbolically transcend death and to continue relationships beyond death, and (2) that this view might be enhanced by a tree’s living nature and capacity to preserve the identities and memories of the dead.
