About Mary Gardens

About Mary Gardens                                                      

Today we call a garden planted in Mary’s honor, with plants associated with her by name and/or legend, a Mary Garden.

In the Middle Ages, people loved Mary, Mother of God, so much that they saw reflections of her in plants and flowers and named many of them after her. The white lily reminded them of Mary’s immaculate purity, innocence and virginity and was called Mary’s purity. Roses symbolized her purity, glory and sorrow; she was the Mystical Rose of Heaven.

Saint Peter Damian, who lived in the eleventh century, wrote these lines in a hymn to Mary:

    He clothed you with lilies, covered you with roses     

   He embellished you with the flowers of virtue.                             

 Raphael, Giotto, Fra Angelico and other artists included roses and lilies in their paintings of the Madonna.

Shakespeare wrote that “winking Mary-buds (marigolds) begin to ope their golden eyes” in Cybeline,  (Act II, Scene iii).

Old garden books indicate that hundreds of plants were associated with Mary, in England, France, Italy and Germany. Plants were dedicated to Mary because they may have been connected with some event in her life or flowered around the time of one of her feast days – snowdrops for the Feast of the Purification and Assumption lily for the feast of the Assumption – and were used in decorating the altar on these days.

A few examples:

Marigolds are called Mary’s Gold and a legend tells that when the Holy Family was on its way to Egypt, robbers accosted them and demanded money. Mary opened her purse and out fell marigold blossoms.

Columbine is called Our Lady’s Shoes and Our Lady’s Slipper, because the fallen spurs resemble shoes and slippers. Foxgloves were Mary’s Gloves, zinnias were Little Mary.

Artists first began to depict Mary with flowers in the twelfth century and by the fifteenth century numerous paintings showed Mary in flower gardens, many of them enclosed gardens. Some drawings or woodcuts of Mary in a small garden were titled “Mary Garden,” from which comes the name Mary Garden for gardens filled with Mary’s flowers. (Information about these art works can be found in my book, Mary’s Flowers: Gardens, Legends and Meditations.)

The Protestant Reformation, which began in 1517, limited overt devotion to Mary, but flowers associated with Mary still grew in English monastery gardens.

The concept of a “Mary Garden” seems to have originated in this country, when the Mary Garden at St. Joseph’s Church in Woods Hole, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, was established in 1932.  The garden included some fifty flowers of Our Lady from the medieval countryside of England.

In 1951, John Stokes, who was inspired by a visit to the Garden at Woods Hole, began to promote the idea of Mary Gardens. Since then Mary Gardens have been established in the U.S. and other countries, many in association with parish churches. Stokes wrote: “Proposed first for home gardens, Mary Gardens were soon established at schools, parishes, burial plots, institutions, and shrines.”

The Mary Garden at Woods Hole, and John Stokes’ unceasing efforts, led to the development of other Mary Gardens in this country and elsewhere. Early gardens in the U.S. include those at St. Mary’s Church, Annapolis, Maryland; Our Lady of Lourdes Grotto on the property of Mount Saint John near Dayton, Ohio; St. Catherine of Siena Church in Portage, Michigan, and the Episcopal Convent of the Transfiguration in Glendale near Cincinnati, Ohio.

Countless Mary Gardens have been established by parishes, schools, religious communities and private homes. John Stokes’ vision continues to inspire.

John Stokes died in 2007. The Mary’s Gardens web site, developed by Stokes and now available at http://campus.udayton.edu/mary/resources/m_garden/marygardensmain.html, includes all of his work - practical, factual, spiritual and inspirational.