I think one issue is regulatory. Many jurisdictions disapprove of stashing corpses outside of designated areas, and designated areas make their own rules about how you need to be packaged and what sort of marker is acceptable.
Aside from that, I’d imagine that the same space constraints that give some existing cemetery sites trouble would apply, a tree isn’t smaller than a headstone and you could only plant them so close together before having to confront squeamishness about possibly exhuming the occasional bone bit. And there really isn’t too much call, in most developed landscapes, for greenspace areas that are fairly densely wooded but not forest, the planning types tend to prefer a bit less tree cover.
If you were going to bury in any suitable location, rather than designated sites, you could likely beat the density problem at least for a while; but people seem to be touchy about the prospect of bits of graveyard impinging on their suburbia, so that would be an uphill battle.
I see what you say about designation, but I’m not talking about impinging on suburbia. Surely new land is acquisitioned often for the purpose of cemeteries. I’m just talking about changing the nature of cemeteries. As they stand now, excuse the pun, but it’s dead-land. With forests they’d become places that you’d go to on a sunny day for a picnic.
Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against the idea(and at least in this area, trees are often part of cemetery landscaping). I’m just speculating on why it might be treated as incompatible by common cemetery policies. Aside from sheer inertia, my assumption is spacing. The ‘tree farm’ look, which you’d get with existing cemetery plot layouts isn’t very appealing; but the natural forest requires both time and space, often with several times as much space between trees as is common between headstones.
I read an article once, years ago about a 'Forest of the Dead'. Basically you lower your beloved in a cardboard or wicker coffin, then plant a tree on top. An excellent use both of land and the dead methinks.
Why is this not commonplace?
Because it’s insufficiently lucrative for the vendors, and because of a neurotic craving for pseudo-immortality among customers.
I could totally understand wanting to make something that would last 5000 years, but I can’t understand wanting to sequester your unused resources. People are made of meat; when I’m done with it, why would I want to deprive anyone else of my meat?
Personally I want to be immortalised in carbonite in a double-bird-salute pose.
They could stick me on top of this thing or something, to like, welcome the visitors. I’d be okay with that,
