This is the supermarket where I sometimes do my food shopping, Edeka, not a garden centre or anything like that. And on the right you can see the green watering-cans to take to the cemetery. Is this a typical German thing?
LATER NOTE: Ann Stewart-Bendorf reports:
The graves are so well tended in Germany because there is a legal obligation to keep them orderly for a certain period (in statute it states 25 years, where my parents-in-law are buried it is 30 years).
§§ 25 and 26 Gesetz über das Leichen-, Bestattungs- und Friedhofswesen
(Bestattungsgesetz)
(presumably that is for Baden-Württemberg – Land legislation)
Seasonal marketing is probably universal. Looks like a good set of products to sell this week, and a grocery store would seem quite convenient for many planning to fix up a grave for the holidays.
That’s nothing. At Costco (a wholesale chain) over here you can now buy your own casket (!).
Clemens: but you wouldn’t see this in England. I don’t think they would make any money out of it. At least where I come from. I assume it’s because in Germany, even if you get cremated, you still have to be buried. Or maybe people are just more traditional. I often see someone on a bike with a watering can on the back, and I know they’re going to the cemetery. I can see myself buying a coffin at Costco before I buy this graveyard peat. (I don’t even know what its special qualities are in contrast to ordinary peat).