24/04/2026
There’s something quietly powerful about rosemary at a farewell.
For centuries, rosemary has symbolised remembrance. It scent lingers and in moments of grief it becomes more than just a plant - It becomes a promise. When someone places a sprig of rosemary on a casket, it isn’t just a gesture. It’s a way of saying, I will remember you.
At funerals, where words often fall short, rosemary speaks gently for us. It carries love, memory, and connection—things that don’t end when a life does. Each sprig laid down is deeply personal, yet universally understood: a quiet tribute, a final act of care, a symbol that even in goodbye, there is something that remains.
And sometimes, all it takes is a small green leaf to say what the heart cannot.
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LOST ANZAC KIWI TRADITION
The associations of rosemary with Anzac day have an added dimension, in the fact that rosemary grows wild across the Gallipoli peninsula.
Soldiers crawling through the scrub at Gallipoli would smell of rosemary and the distinct smell made it associate it the campaign long after the war.
It is uncertain when the practice of wearing rosemary on Anzac Day first began, but it has became a regular feature of remembrance early after 1916.
But for a late arrival of poppies for Remembrance Day in early 1922 in New Zealand, it would have been the symbol for Anzac.
Some RSAs in NZ still place Rosemary on the service graves yet now the poppy has become the main symbol.
