Welcome to Forager’s Legacy Memorial Park
Vision
We are building a beautiful native plant garden that helps our community connect with the earth, our ancestors, and the cycles of nature. We envision a world where humans can nourish and be nourished by the native plant and fungi life.
Mission
Through green burial practices and continual land stewardship, we will rehabilitate clear-cut land, and grow locally sourced native plants and mushrooms, and teach members how to forage in this park safely and sustainably. We are creating a beautiful and ecologically supportive burial ground that can nourish life. Eventually, we seek to expand the park to include more clear-cut and timber lands so that we can create a thriving forest and prairie for the declining insect, bird, mammal, fungi, and plants in the area. Northwest Georgia has some of the highest risk imperiled ecological diversity in the southeast, and we need your help to leave a legacy for generations to come.
This memorial park is a place for the living to enjoy, connect, and honor their ancestors and family. It is a place for peaceful reflection, meditation, ceremony, and quiet. It is a place for the Bobcats, Coyotes, Opposums, Raccoons, Hawks, Woodpeckers, Warblers, and so much more. Together, we will grow a resilient ecosystem that is protected in perpetuity.
Members Only
This land will take time, energy, and financial support to regenerate. Initially, this will be a members-only memorial garden. Once the garden grows and matures we will ask existing members to vote as to when and how to open the cemetery to the public. We want you to be able to interact with this land more intimately than any other national park, state park, city park, or burial ground currently allows. We want you to be able to harvest mushrooms, sassafrass, flowers, and more. To ensure that this garden remains fruitful and accessible, we are opening this property only to those who agree to help steward the land and contribute to its continuation. There are multiple ways that you can support the preservation and perpetual care of this beautiful land and receive access to the land anytime from dusk to dawn.
Pick any or all of the following to visit our Memorial Garden:
- Purchase Interment Rites for a Full Body Burial or Ash Burial – Free Lifetime Access to our Park for you and your immediate family.
- Purchase a One-Year Pass ($30/month or $300 a year) – all purchases of passes accrue toward the price of a burial plot.
- Attend our Public Events – Foraging Hikes, Stargazing, Wildflower Hikes, Bird Watching, Tea Parties, and more!
- Apply for a Scholarship or Volunteer opportunities
- Attend an Event at Just Love Forest or spend the night at one of our partner locations and receive free Access during your stay.
Garden Options
Founders Garden – Pre-Selling Plots to purchase land in need of our care.
We intend to raise funds to purchase 30 acres of beautiful mountain land nestled into 1900 acres of beautiful forest under conservation easement. Wildlife benefits most from large swaths of land dedicated to their survival. As we grow the burial grounds we intend to provide a haven for birds, animals, plants, and mushrooms to flourish. To raise the funds necessary for the purchase and acquisition of this land, we are offering enticing perks to our Founding supporters:
Founders Garden Perks:
- Discounts on Burial Plots:
- Discounts start at 30% off and decrease by 5% with every ten plots sold
- All prices are in 2025 numbers and will rise with inflation – prepay to lock in lower prices and lifetime access to this beautiful habitat
- Lifetime 365-day per year access to the memorial park once the land is purchased
- Free monthly foraging classes with Josh Wayne for one year in Atlanta or the Forager’s Legacy Park
- Choose one free Lace Agate – collected in Chattooga County, cleaned, and polished by Josh Wayne. Under the ground we intend to purchase are similarly beautiful lace agate, stalagmites, and stalactites from 250 million years ago.
- Discounts on private events including (star-watching, yearly celebrations, retreats, and more)
- We realize that you or a loved one may require a burial plot before the purchase and construction of our Legacy Park. If you contributed to this pre-sale and need a burial plot before we purchase the Forager’s Legacy Park, we can transfer your Plot purchase to Just Love Forest’s Burial Grounds right next door atop Bhakti Mountain. Transfers must be equal or lesser value otherwise, you will be asked to pay the difference should you want a more expensive plot. We are also able to refund your purchase if you need a burial before our burial ground purchase but would prefer to be buried elsewhere.
Founding members can choose to be buried in any of our available locations below, or they can choose the limited Founders Garden Plot on Hawthorn Hill or Look Out Terrace.
Look Out Terrace
As you enter the burial grounds, you will see one of the most beautiful and easily accessible mountain views in the area. Wildflowers decorate the prairie from spring to fall. In winter, old seed heads feed a diversity of migratory birds! Bobcats, wild turkeys, coyotes, fox squirrels, opossums, deer, raccoons, and hundreds of other animals big and small call these grasslands and forests their home. We are going to grow a garden that feeds humans and diverse wildlife down to the pollinators of this blue toadflax (Nuttallanthus canadensis). We imagine strawberry fields (Fragraria virginica) mixed in with the multiple species of St. Johns Worts (Hypericum gentianoides, H. crux-andraea, H. hypericoides, and more). Native mountain mints (Pycnanthemum), bee balms (Monarda), Blazing stars (Liatris), and many of our native bunch grasses that feed wildlife and provide nesting and cover for the bob white quail and other young birds. This area will remain a prairie to maintain this endangered ecosystem while ensuring beautiful mountain views and open sky for generations to come.
Wake up early to get above the clouds and watch the dew rise at Prarie Point!
Or join us in the evening for a beautiful sunset.
Don’t miss our seasonal stargazing events to see the planets, shooting stars, and the Milkyway.
Plant Gallery
Hawthorn Hill
Take our chert road down to the base of the ridge and turn left. Cross over a dry creek and into our 10-acre memorial garden. Nestled in between 716 acres of conservation easement land and a protected stream bank, we are regenerating prairie to nurture a thriving native habitat. Hawthorn Hill has beautiful views to the Northeast where you can see Taylor’s Ridge as well as Fossil Ridge (we hope to acquire this land for future recreation, preservation, and burial).
It will take much work to regenerate this land, thin the loblolly pines, and replant native shrubs and wildflowers. We look forward to working together to create a beautiful, accessible memorial garden. Hawthorn Hill will be sectioned into smaller gardens based on the hill’s topography and aspect. Because the hill has North, East, South, and West facing slopes, we have a lot of room for creatively planting habitat that provides space for endangered and threatened plants and animals. We intend to manage Hawthorn Hill for the threatened Ash trees and encourage Morel growth near water drainage. We want to grow large specimen trees of Shagbark Hickory, Mountain Oak, Black Oak, Blue Ash, Green Ash, Persimmon, Black Walnut, Black Cherry, and potentially some native Chesnuts that are still producing some viable seed. Underneath the trees will lie a diversity of native forbs and grasses that provide medicine and food for those members of Forager’s Legacy Memorial Park.
As foragers and people interested in local and sustainable food production, we want to leave a legacy of some of the most beautiful and unique trees, shrubs, and grasses for generations to come. We will act as an ever-expanding native seed bank of local ecotype seeds that can be used to regenerate neighboring lands in NW Georgia and NE Alabama. We imagine 100-200-year-old fruit and nut trees providing bountiful meals for future generations of humans and wildlife.
Join us on Hawthorn Hill to help save the nearly extinct Valley Head Hawthorn and rare Allegheny Hawthorn that call this forest home.
Josh Wayne discovered this Crataegus austromontana tree next to Hawthorn Hill in 2023 with the help of botanists: Ren Oliver, Tom Diggs Ph.D. , Ron Lance, and Adam Black. This tree was known from a single collection in Tennessee and was thought to be extinct for over 100 years. In 2021, it was discovered in one North Alabama area. Josh’s discovery marks the second known location of this endangered tree and the only known location in the state of Georgia. Hawthorn expert Ron Lance identified multiple Allegheny Hawthorn (Crataegus allegheniensis) trees at Just Love Forest. Both Hawthorn trees are rare and in need of our help. We hope to bring back these rare plants and stabilize their numbers by planting them in our Mountain View Memorial Garden and on Hawthorn hill for all to enjoy for generations to come.