A tree you plant yourself, while you are still here.
Almost every memorial tree in Britain is bought after a death, by the people left behind. This one works the other way round. You choose it, you grow it, and it carries on afterwards.
Why do it now
A tree bought after a funeral is planted by people who are exhausted. They pick a species in an afternoon, often without knowing what the person would have wanted, and the tree arrives into the worst month of their year.
Doing it yourself moves all of that. You pick the tree. You decide where it goes. You spend years with it, and by the time anyone else is involved they inherit something already established, with a record of how it got there. The decision stops being a task for somebody grieving and becomes something you did on an ordinary Tuesday.
There is a practical argument too. A tree you plant at fifty has fifty years of head start on one planted the week after you die. Oaks are slow. That head start is the whole difference between a sapling in a pot and a tree with a trunk.
Three ways to do this.
These are different products for different moments, and each suits somebody. The difference worth understanding is when anything actually happens.
Prices read from each seller’s own page on 20 September 2026. They change, and ours is not the cheapest of them.
| Who | What it is | What you get | When it begins | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Living Memorial | Living Memorial Tree Package | A 1–1.2m sapling in a pot, a soil formulated to neutralise ashes, stake and ties, a bio guard, and an optional plaque. | On delivery. Designed to be planted with someone’s ashes. | £165.00 |
| Make it Wild | Memorial Tree — Reserve a Plot | A reserved plot at their memorial woodland, and an email confirming the purchase. Their page asks you to note the order number and make sure your family knows it. | After you die. In their words, when it is time for the tree to be planted with your ashes, your family contacts them to arrange it. | £490.00 |
| Tree2mydoor | Memorial Trees collection | Seven products, from a mini flowering cherry to a dwarf Japanese cherry. The £59 gift pack adds an engraved pewter plaque, a plinth and a tree protector. | On delivery. They offer next-day delivery to Great Britain. | £33.98 – £129.00 |
| DeathTree | A legacy tree you grow | A young British tree, a certificate, and a record you add to for as long as you have it: photographs, heights, where it is growing, and what you would like to happen to it. | The week you order. | From £139 |
Make it Wild’s page asks you to note your order number and make sure your family knows it, then to have them contact the woodland when the time comes. That is a reasonable way to run a memorial woodland. It is also a purchase where, by design, nothing grows for decades.
What this is not.
It is not a will
Nothing you write in your tree record has legal force. If you want your wishes to bind anyone, you need a will. The government explains how atgov.uk/make-will.
It is not a funeral plan
We take no part in arranging a funeral and hold no money against one. A funeral plan is a regulated financial product. This is a tree.
It is not a burial plot
You are buying a tree to keep, not a piece of ground. Where it ends up is yours to decide, and you will need the landowner’s permission if that is not your own garden.
We do not handle ashes
Scattering or burying ashes needs permission and proper guidance, and ashes can harm a young tree if they go in badly. Your record can say what you would like. Arranging it is for the people who come after, with the right advice.
What arrives.
A young tree
Small. It is a sapling, not a specimen, and it will look modest for a few years.UK mainland delivery is £9.95 and we dispatch within 10 working days.
A certificate
A record of the species, the date it started with you, and the name you give it. You can personalise it and print it.
Somewhere to keep the story
Photographs, measurements, where it is planted, and private notes about what you would like to happen. Only you can see the private parts.
When the thought usually arrives.
Hardly anybody decides this out of nowhere. It follows something else — a birthday, an afternoon with a solicitor, a grandchild, a garden you have stopped thinking of as temporary. Each of these is written out separately.
A milestone birthday
For the birthday that made you think about time rather than cake.
Read this oneThe year you write your will
For the afternoon the paperwork is already open on the table.
Read this oneA new grandchild
For growing it yourself first and handing it over at eighteen.
Read this oneThe house you expect to stay in
For the garden you have stopped treating as temporary.
Read this oneQuestions people ask first.
Is it strange to buy this for myself?
Plenty of people write a will, choose a song, or tell someone where the paperwork is. This is the same kind of thinking with something alive at the end of it. Most people who buy one say the appeal is the growing, not the ending.
What if I move house?
Trees in pots move with you. A tree already in the ground usually does not, and moving an established tree rarely goes well. That is worth thinking about before you plant it out, and it is why the record asks where it is.
What happens to the record when I die?
Whoever you have told can read it, because you have shown them or written down how. We do not contact anyone on your behalf, we are not told when someone dies, and we act on nothing automatically. You can also export the whole record as a file and keep it wherever you keep everything else.
Will it outlive me?
We do not promise that. An oak can live for centuries in the right place, and a sapling can die in its first winter in the wrong one. What we can say is that a tree planted now has more time than one planted later.
