Chat & Photos
CatholicMom Website Mary Gardens
Jul 22 2002, Lisa
I am the webmaster of http://www.catholicmom.com and just wanted
to thank you for the wonderful resource you are providing with
your Mary Gardens site.
We reference it frequently at Catholicmom.com and I even used it
in creating my own garden with my son this summer.
You can see a picture of my garden and an essay I wrote at
http://www.catholicmom.com/mary_gardens.htm
Thanks again and may God bless your work.
(From catholicmom website)
Mary's Gardens
Have you planted yours?
We've highlighted it before, but we wanted to remind you about a
wonderful web site at www.mgardens.org dedicated to honoring the
Blessed Mother through the planting of special Mary's Gardens.
The site highlights hundreds of flowers named in medieval times as
symbols of the life, mysteries and privileges of the Blessed
Virgin Mary, Mother of Jesus. It includes special information for
planting your own Mary's Garden and even has tips for container
gardens for those without yard space. Check it out today at
www.mgardens.org and get busy planting.
o O o
Lisa and Eric's Mary's Garden (DSC00010.JPG)
As we all know, the month of May is devoted to Our Lady, but July
seems as wonderful a time as any to honor Mary with the planting
of your very own Mary's Garden. A few weeks back, I shared with
you that my son Eric and I were busily working on our very own
Mary's garden. My mother and sister provided the impetus,
blessing me with a beautiful statue of Our Lady of Fatima for my
birthday.
My ten year old son Eric took on the project with his usual zest
and attention to detail. He surfed over to the wonderful web site
www.mgardens.org and immediately began to compile a list of
flowers originally named in honor of Mary. My suggestion that we
didn't need to stick strictly to this official list was
immediately vetoed...only flowers specifically celebrating Mary
made the "cut" on Eric's list. The web site offered a detailed
list of over 100 flowers and plants. We next researched the list
to determine which plants and flowers could survive Fresno's 100+
degree summer temperatures.
The dirty work then began! It took us two days to dig up the
hardpan (rock solid) soil for the bed and lay out the border. In
retrospect, this was precious time with my ten year old son, who
probably won't want to have much to do with Mom for very much
longer! While we dug and hoed, we talked about so many different
things, laughing and pondering and just spending time together.
What would probably have been a lonely job had I taken it on alone
became a memory I'll treasure forever (or at least as long as the
blisters last!).
Once the bed was dug and prepared, the fun of choosing and
planting the flowers came next. We bought our flowers at our
local discount store, carefully considering the color scheme and
Marian names of the flowers (our roses are "Pristines", a
beautiful white blossom as pure as Mary's heart).
Now, two weeks later, the petunias ("Our Lady's Praises") and
zinnias ("The Virgin") have begun to bloom in earnest. Each
morning, I spend a few quiet moments in prayer in front of my
garden asking Our Lady's intercession in the course of a busy
mommy's day. I can see Our Lady from my kitchen window as I wash
dinner dishes. Mary smiles at me through my laundry room window as
I fold the boys clean clothes. The fact that Eric was so involved
in planning and preparing the garden adds immeasurably to the joy
it brings me each day. Soon these lazy days of summer will be
giving way to fall, and Eric will be online again investigating
bulbs for autumn planting!
o O o
Thanks to CatholicMom LynnM. for great sharing the following great
tips on creating an interactive Mary's garden with your children!
Dear Lisa,
We live in Falls Church, VA and attend St. Philip's Church. Here
is a picture of our Children's Mary Garden my two girls and I made
with a lot of help by my DH. We had the garden blessed by our
parish priest on May 31 (Visititation of the Blessed Virgin Mary).
It is in interactive Children's Mary Garden where our children can
hop on each stepping stone and say a "Hail Mary". There are ten
stepping stones all together to make a full decade. Even my 19
mos old DS likes hopping around. I wanted the Blessed Mother seem
accessible to them like I think all parts of our faith should be.
All of the flowers are from a link from your site which teach you
what flowers you can put in a Mary Garden. We used Bleeding
hearts, Forget-me-nots, Impatiens, and the four tiny Boxwood
bushes.
God bless, LynnM.
Want to share a photo of your family's Mary Garden?
Email lisa@catholicmom.com and we will share your photo here.
Happy gardening!
o O o
As a resource for those interested in planting Mary's Gardens,
take a look at Mary's Flowers: Gardens, Legends &Meditations
(Living Legends of Our Lady), available for order through Amazon
(remember your purchase supports CatholicMom.com!).
A reviewer at Amazon writes: "In addition to an excellent
appendix, index, and bibliography of gardens and plant listings,
this book also is a personal Mary Garden planner. Just in time for
Chistmas gift exchanges to allow you to give more knowledge of
Faith in a vibrant, beautiful, and interesting way. This quality
publication gives artistically, as Christian art has, to those who
enjoy studying the nobility of the world around them, as well as
to those who plant gardens! (St. Martha, Okemos, Michigan
Foundations in Adult Education, Fr. Jon Wehrle, Pastor)"
Jul 26 2002, John Stokes, Mary's Gardens
Thanks for your message of Jul 22 telling of your valued website,
with Mary Gardens page at
http://www.catholicmom.com/mary_gardens.htm
and of your links to ours.
Also for your website article and photos re. your and your son,
Eric's Mary Garden; and for the message and photo from LynnM.
We've spelled out all our basics in the website articles and
research, but the examples of the CHAT section, such as yours,
here, offer a sense of how people actally get started with their
gardens, and discover all the responses of their children, and all
the other meaningful things that happen.
I assume you have visited the two 1955 articles on our website re.
children and Mary Gardens: "In Mary's Garden" and "Garden
Catechism".
Also, may I call your atention to the parents & teachers Mary
Garden Guide privately published by our colleague, Lisa Creamer:
"Mary Gardens for Children - Project Guide for Home & School
Use" by Lisa Creamer, 36 pp., 10 illustrations; Morning Star
Gifts, Olney, MD, April 2001 - $9.00 plus $1.39 first class
mail postage to anywhere in the U.S.. Check or Money
Order.
Morning Star Gifts
P.O. Box 1616
Olney, MD 20830-1616
e-mail -
(The postage may be a little more now, with the 6/30 rate
increase.)