On Memorial Trees

I recently got into a discussion with a friend about donating trees for replanting forests in memory of deceased friends and family members, and have spent some time since then thinking about the advantages (or not) versus ordering flowers or making some other charitable donation to honor the life of a now-deceased friend or family member. This decision is not one to be made lightly, as how we choose to allocate our money often says a lot about our values. Remember that comment Jesus made about “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also”?

First of all, the price of a memorial tree varies hugely from one company to the next. Most funeral homes now have a link on their website to encourage us to purchase a memorial tree or send flowers through the funeral home’s own website. I can’t be sure about the percent of the price that the funeral home receives for accepting the order through its website, but it’s probably not a trivial amount. After all, many websites generate revenue for the host firm based on product sales that result from a customer’s “clicking through” to the vendor advertising their services on that host’s website.

I reviewed financial data for the Arbor Day Foundation, an organization to which my now-deceased mother was a long-time contributor, and it’s clear that at least 50% of all that non-profit’s revenues are plowed back into tree nurseries and tree-planting. A donor can actually contribute to the firm for memorial tree planting right on the ADF website, with trees available at prices from $2 for one tree alone to as little as $1.50 each for a larger quantity purchase of memorial trees.

This stands in stark contrast to the per tree charges at some funeral home websites I reviewed, where prices are as much as $40 for one tree. I think if I decide to purchase trees, I’ll go with the Arbor Day Foundation option, thank you very much. There may be other similar forestry non-profits that offer these services as well, but this is one organization that is very open about providing annual financial information and making it readily available.

Audited annual financial statements are easily found right on the website, where you can review all the Arbor Day Foundation’s revenues, spending, assets, liabilities, and cash flows for 2024 with just a click of the download button. In comparison, I could only find information on one of the firms selling this service through funeral home websites. That firm is a for-profit company that does not make such information available to tree purchasers, or to any outsiders. Since it is not a publicly-traded stockholderowned corporation either, there are no quarterly reports or annual reports to shareholders.

Now about memorial trees versus flowers or another charitable contribution: when families request donations to a local nonprofit or church, I often send my money there, unless I want to make a particular statement to those attending the funeral, such as sending a wreath or a spray with a ribbon displaying the words “BELOVED FRIEND” or “GODMOTHER” or something similar.

Those displays are a public avowal of a cherished relationship that has now been broken, and a reminder to grieving survivors that they are not alone in having suffered the loss of this loved one. Often, surviving children and grandchildren have no idea of some close relationships their deceased parent or grandparent enjoyed in decades past, and are interested in discovering more details afterwards. It can be rewarding and restorative to visit with relatives of a deceased friend, but one does need to “break the ice” with a surviving family member first, and flowers have often been that “icebreaker” for me.

Whatever you do to honor a deceased friend or classmate or acquaintance, dear readers, I know you will find a way to do so that conveys your own sense of loss, but also provides a benefit or generates a connection to others: if not to surviving family members and other bereaved friends now, then to generations yet unborn, who will perhaps sit and read under a memorial tree planted by the Arbor Day Foundation in 2025.