- September 19, 2024
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Laura Starkey, founder and executive director of Heartwood Preserve, a natural burial cemetery in New Port Richey, is no stranger to the business of preserving a legacy.
To get to the 41-acre burial grounds that border Starkey Wilderness Preserve in Pasco County, one must drive down Starkey Boulevard and, depending on the pursuit angle, pass Starkey Ranch and Starkey Market.
So the Starkey legacy runs deep in the region. The Starkey family moved to the Tampa Bay area in 1899 from St.Cloud, Minnesota and Jay Starkey Sr., Laura’s grandfather, purchased 16,000 acres with a few partners in 1938. (Starkey Sr. is quoted in a 1981 interview that he paid $1.40 per acre — roughly $30.79 today when adjusted for inflation).
Over the years more land was purchased and sold by the patriarch and his descendents. Much of their land was earmarked for development but there has been a concerted effort to conserve the land as well, hence the 19,266-acre wilderness preserve.
“To conserve land is expensive. It's not something where you just decide you're not going to sell out and make money and develop it,” Starkey says. “You have to pay for it. You have to manage it. You can't just lock the gate and throw away the key and just leave it and call it conservation. You have to do control burns. You have to manage invasive species. You have to pay taxes. There's a lot of things you have to do to conserve land.”
With those parameters in mind, income streams are needed to cover the costs of conservation.
At a land conservation conference in 2006, Starkey first learned about natural burial cemeteries as a potential business model. The idea germinated and formally sprouted Heartwood Preserve in 2016, now generating $356,000 in annual revenue with four employees. Full body interments are available for just over $5,000 and cremation interments are priced at $2,407. Her father, Jay B. Starkey Jr. and mother, Marsha were contract number one, signed Nov. 1 — the Day of the Dead.
The competition in the green burial market is not exactly stiff. Only two other cemeteries are dedicated exclusively to green burials in Florida: Prairie Creek Conservation Cemetery, a nonprofit based in Gainesville and Glendale Memorial Nature Preserve in DeFuniak Springs in the Panhandle. Four other hybrid cemeteries exist in the state, where conventional burials are offered alongside green burials.
It is somewhat disingenuous to say a green burial works much the same as a ‘traditional’ burial, given green burials have been taking place for thousands of years. Instead of being embalmed, placed in a metal casket and lowered into a vault, one can opt to be wrapped in a shroud or placed in a traditional pine box and placed directly into the soil three feet below the ground.
Starkey’s husband James ‘J.R.’ Parris offers his pine box making services as part of the business model. Parris grew up in a family of homebuilders and he now runs a woodworking business out of a shop on the property of their home.
“I run the burial crew, and I saw a few caskets, and I just thought I could do a better job than what I was seeing, and I could save people money,” Parris says.
He’s made a half dozen caskets or so for the preserve and has contracts with other funeral homes. The most important one so far was made for Laura’s mother, who died in October 2023. “When they sold their land, their ranch house was torn down a few years ago,” Parris says. “They saved a lot of the wood that was in the house so I was able to make a casket for her mother out of her living room walls.”
For those used to attending burials in a perfectly manicured cemetery, the concept can take some getting used to. “They're learning.They're kind of taking baby steps to even be here. They know it's peaceful. They know they love it here, but they don't really get the [concept] ‘let's just let him or her go back to nature’, right?” Starkey says. “So I try to use words like, ‘we're allowing nature to embrace him. You know, we're embracing, we're not just leaving him in the woods and forgetting about him, right? We're letting him become part of this community of plant life.”
Mitch Dormont, a retired psychotherapist from New York, chose Heartwood Preserve for its green burial practices and local nature preserve. He and his wife, Susan, pre-planned their burials to avoid financial burden on their children. Dormont appreciates the preserve's eco-friendly approach.
“Heartwood is a cemetery associated with a nature preserve, which is something that makes my heart sing. It’s a silly way to put it,” Dormont says, “I've been bird watching since the 1980s and I'm an old-fashioned tree hugger, if you will. So the whole idea was just down my alley.”
Dormont cites his parents dying young and the book “The American Way of Death” by Jessica Mitford as additional inspirations for choosing a green burial. “Americans tend to put anything associated with death, far, far away, but we're all gonna go and we might as well acknowledge it,” he says.
Not everyone is enthusiastic about the concept. Prior to opening, Starkey hosted a few townhall meetings to get input from the community. One member continuously raised concerns about animals digging up remains and dragging them back to his property.
“We do have some animals here that dig naturally,” Starkey concedes. “Armadillos, which are little guys, and they dig little holes that are about six inches wide and six inches deep, and they're the shape of their little snouts. They're digging for grubs and little worms and whatever bugs, they get them and they move on.”
Starkey also references feral hogs and other rooter animals, but notes that none of them have come close to penetrating or compromising a resting place. “The only animals that would dig deeper holes than that are dogs, and the deepest hole a dog can dig is not anywhere close to the depth of the burial,” she says.
Currently around 300 bodies are spread across four acres — 10% of the property. Moving forward, there is plenty of room for those seeking green burials. Over the years Starkey has concentrated on smart, steady growth. A proper welcome center was built, followed by a barn with a tractor. In the future she plans to add a chapel for bereaved families as well.
“I just love connecting with people, and there's so many, and I just thought this is a way that people can connect and learn about these woods. And I feel so strongly about this natural ecosystem because I grew up here, I understand it. I've lived it,” she says.
Florida is also invested in the success of the cemetery long after the original owners are gone: part of every burial payment is required to go into a trust fund that provides future care and maintenance of the property.
“That's what is put in place by the state of Florida to make sure that cemeteries into the future don't end up being wards of the state, so to speak, like some of the old historic cemeteries, the little city cemeteries, the town rural cemeteries that are in disrepair, the stories you hear about in the news about these forgotten cemeteries that have been bowled over,” Starkey says. “All of these regulations are to prevent that from happening.”
In the meantime, there is plenty of work to do. Starkey and her team are sensitive to the nature of the work, but enthusiastic about its importance to those tasked with saying goodbye to loved ones.
“It gives us a kind of a purpose, and then people leave here saying, ‘Thank you.’ That's the thing we get, at the end of the burial day, people just look at us and say, ‘Thank you. You guys did an amazing job’, or ‘This was beautiful’, but thank you is what I get more than anything. And that just keeps us all going. It just feels like an honor to get to do this.”
