The Green Cemetery is the second public burial space in Carlisle, and the larger of the two. Opened for municipal use in the late 1830s and still open for burials today, it is here that most lifelong residents of the town are buried.

The half-acre Central Burying Ground on Lowell Street had served the town well for four decades after its purchase by the Second District of Carlisle in 1784, but by the mid-1820s it had become clear that more land would be needed to serve the burial needs of the growing community. In 1826 the Rev. Paul Litchfield, the longtime pastor of the First Parish Church, offered the Town a piece of land on his farm at 501 Lowell Street for a new cemetery. The offer was not accepted, however, and it was not until 1837 that the Town purchased land for additional burial space. This was another half-acre plot, located just east of the town center adjoining a longtime family burial ground on the south side of Bedford Road that belonged to the Green family.

There were already a number of graves in the Green family burial ground. That part eventually came under town ownership as well, and today it forms the oldest section of the public cemetery that in 1867 was named, by unanimous vote of the Carlisle Cemetery Commission, the Green Cemetery. According to local historian Donald Lapham, original Carlisle settler John Green had set aside a small part of his large homestead farm as a burial plot when his son Asa Green, a former Revolutionary soldier, died in March 1785. Historian Martha Wilkins concurred that Asa Green's is the earliest grave, and also stated that the next earliest is apparently that of Sarah Parlin, who died in November 1785.

As of 2009 the cemetery sits on 11.1 acres. The earliest death date in 1785. It is still open to burials.

The Massachusetts Historical Commission refers to this cemetery in MACRIS as CAR.801 Green Cemetery.

This cemetery is referred to as GR2 Green Cemetery in the "Vital Records of Carlisle Massachusetts to the end of the year 1849."