They Freeze Corpses And Call It Gardening

By Warren Hamilton Category: Morbid Curiosities 7th August 2026

Believe it or not, there is a genuine plan where you could, in theory, end up as compost. It is called promession, a Swedish-sounding idea born in the 1990s that promises to turn dead people into soil without the smoke, fuss or fancy coffins.

Here is how the pitch goes: first you deep-freeze the body in liquid nitrogen until it is brittle. Then you give it a shaking, a vibration or two, and the frozen corpse supposedly crumbles into brittle fragments. Metals and implants are removed, what remains is freeze-dried, then put into a biodegradable container and buried shallowly so microbes finish the job. Result: a few months later you are more garden than grave.

Sounds a bit like a science lab doing kebab, right? It does. But the backers sold it as proper ecological mourning. Less fuel than cremation, less land eaten than traditional burial, and the family can scoop a handful of mum into a pot and grow begonias with it if they fancy. Very tidy. A bit grim. Also very modern.

Here is the sensible bit: promession was more promise than practice. Companies touted it, pushed for permits, wrote glossy leaflets, but it never became a common legal service. The outfits pushing it failed to scale, regulators were cautious, and funeral culture is stubborn. So the thing has mostly lived as an idea people ogle at funerals fairs and then go home to their tea.

I like the honesty of it though. No purple velvet hearses, no vague incense or paperwork that smells of someone else. You either go up in a puff or you go back into the soil and feed the dahlias. Both are tidy endings. Just imagine the relatives at the wake deciding whether to plant tomatoes or hostas. Proper awkward small talk, but efficient.

Mostly, promession is a reminder that death care can be daft, inventive and occasionally useful. The world will keep inventing nicer ways to be dead. Some of them will catch on. Some will fold like a bad umbrella. Promession sits somewhere between honourable intention and slightly bonkers engineering - and I find that quietly comforting.