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Updated Monday, Oct. 13, 2025, 11:06 a.m.
Winter Garden on Thursday voted unanimously to boost the fees for burial and interment at the city’s 100-year-old cemetery as part of Resolution 25-11.
The vote on the resolution immediately followed the commission’s unanimous passage of Ordinance 25-35 to allow changes to Chapter 26, Article II of the city’s municipal code dealing with cemetery matters. Under the ordinance, the commission approved additional changes, limiting interment rights to immediate family and adopting procedures in the event the same plot or columbarium niche in the tight-on-space cemetery is sold to separate individuals.
Effective immediately, the city’s $800 plots ($1,200 for nonresidents) will be $3,000 — a 275 percent price increase. Columbarium niches, which had been $600 for residents ($900 for nonresidents), will cost $2,000 — a 233 percent increase. Fees from these sales go into the city’s general fund.
“ We're changing them to be more consistent with surrounding cemeteries,” Stephen Pash, the assistant city manager, explained during his presentation to the city commission. [See sidebar below.]
Pash said an internet search showed that the average price for cemetery plots in the greater Orlando area ranged from $2,500 in a public cemetery to $5,000 to $25,000 for private cemetery plots.
With these changes, Ocoee Cemetery becomes the least expensive option in the West Orange County area, with fees for burial plots at $800 for residents ($1,200 for nonresidents) and columbaria at $1,000 ($1,500 for nonresidents).
In the Winter Garden Cemetery, new changes to the city ordinance mean that purchase of plots and columbaria niches will be limited to Winter Garden residents and people who can demonstrate that they were city residents for at least six months even if they don't live here currently. Changes to the ordinance clarify that cemetery lots are to be used only by the title holder, their spouse, parents and children. Previously, in-laws and grandparents and grandchildren were included, but no longer. The city also added the right to re-purchase plots if the original purchaser is dead but not interred at the Winter Garden cemetery to prevent plots from being resold on sites like The Cemetery Exchange or BurialLink.
Pash told the commission that because space is very limited at the Winter Garden cemetery, families are also being encouraged to “purchase one lot and use it for multiple burials.” The city changed its ordinance to increase the cremated remains permitted in a single grave to six from two. Pash also noted that 12 bodies could be interred in a single site.
The city also added procedures for handling the error of the same plot or columbarium niche being sold to different individuals or families: If there’s been no burial or interment, the person issued the earliest ownership documents gets the lot while the other party is refunded their money. If burial has taken place, then the party whose remains are buried takes precedence and the other party is refunded.
Lastly, the city has specified a six-feet height limit on grave monuments and added a “cementitious product designed to look like marble or stone” to those materials that can be used for markers and monuments.
All Faiths Memorial Park, Casselberry
Columbarium: $4,995
Burial Plot: $7,495
Estate: $4,995
Mausoleum: $8,995
Baldwin-Fairchild at Chapel Hill, Orlando
Columbarium: $4,495
Burial Plot: $5,495
Estate: $8,995
Mausoleum: $9,295
Glen Haven Memorial Park, Winter Park
Columbarium: $3,795
Burial Plot: $7,495
Estate: $26,250
Mausoleum: $9,995
Highland Memorial Gardens, Apopka
Cremation Niche: $2,400-$5,200
Burial Plot: $2,150
Lawn Crypt: $1,850
Mausoleum: $5,300-$13,100
Ocoee Cemetery
Columbarium: $1,000 ($1,500, nonresident)
Burial Plot: $800 ($1,200, nonresident)
Orlando Memorial Gardens
Cremation Burial: $1,295
Cremation Niche: $2,415
Burial Plot: $2,995
Estate: $19,995
Woodlawn Memorial Park
Columbarium: $7,695
Burial Plot: $13,595
Estate: $52,495
Mausoleum: $26,495
