Burials have gone out of fashion in Berlin. As space started getting tight, cemeteries have started charging rental fees on plots, and people are now choosing cremation instead.

With the drop in demand, there are cemeteries being recycled and converted into public parks, playgrounds or gardens.

To some, it might sound macabre. But in Germany, it reflects evolving attitudes about death. Photographer Shane Thomas McMillan visited four of these former cemeteries.

Pupils of the Sophienkirche day-care play soccer near a headstone in the center’s playground. On this afternoon, the headstone also serves as a boundary line for the game.

Shane Thomas McMillan

A pupil of the Sophienkirche day-care makes marks on a gravestone in the center’s playground.

Shane Thomas McMillan

Children climb on a construction near a gravestone in the playground of the Sophienkirche day-care center in Berlin, Germany. The day-care is located on the grounds of the Sophienkirche church, and it’s playground occupies a space that was once the parish’s graveyard.

A mother and son from the neighborhood enter a community garden called “Die Gartnerei” that has sprung up in the retired section of the cemetery of the Jerusalem Church in the Berlin district of Neukolln. The garden grew up as a project of a non-profit maker-space and some other Berlin initiatives.

Shane Thomas McMillan

Due to poor soil, the garden in the retired segment of the cemetery of the Jerusalem Church is primarily for flowers, but spread between the roses and marigolds is the occasional stalk of corn or a head of lettuce.

Shane Thomas McMillan

One of the gardeners who manages the space reaches for some herbs in a special bed off to the edge of the garden. The boundaries of the garden beds and plots are often marked off with brinks and stones that were once the foundations of the grave markers they dug up when excavating the garden.

Shane Thomas McMillan

Pensioner Matthew Smith pauses from his cleanup work in a cemetery of Berlin’s Jerusalem Church a Sunday afternoon. Smith says he comes to the cemetery regularly to tend to his son’s grave. The church’s plans to use the cemetery for new public spaces doesn’t bother him.

Shane Thomas McMillan

Retired grave markers sit outside the main office of “Die Gartnerei” project.

Shane Thomas McMillan

Tree number FWA 46 at the FriedWald Furstenwalde burial forest carries the label of a “family tree.” In this cemetery an hour east of Berlin, clients buy a burial spot at the base of a tree. Upon death, the person’s cremated remains are buried in a biodegradable urn at the foot of the tree of their choice. In the case of this burial spot, the family will most likely be buried together around their tombstone.

Shane Thomas McMillan

Flowers rest at a burial site in the FriedWald Furstenwalde outside Berlin, Germany. Mourners are allowed only to leave native species picked from the forest on the graves, otherwise they are removed by the office of the forest ranger.

Shane Thomas McMillan

A small mobile hangs from a tree in the FriedWald Furstenwalde burial forest. Though graves are not meant to be decorated, some mourners dress the burial sites with small, personal trinkets like this one.

Shane Thomas McMillan

A young guest climbs a tree near a headstone in Berlin’s Leise Park, a former cemetery in Berlin, Germany’s hip neighborhood of Prenzlauerberg. The children in the park all report having favorite headstones and trees in the small, walled-off garden park.

Shane Thomas McMillan

Towering graves have been replaced with jungle-gyms in Berlin’s Leise Park. Opened in 2011, the former cemetery is now a park and playground to a neighborhood that is known for it’s young, hip parents.

Shane Thomas McMillan

A young family plays in Berlin’s Leise Park, just yards way from this headstone. Though many of the headstones and remains have been removed from the park, some remain.

Shane Thomas McMillan

From PRI's The World ©2016 PRI