Chat and Photos Prayer Service for 9-11 Victims
Dedication and Blessing Ceremony
Plant List and Planting Plan
Starting St. John The Baptist Parish Mary Garden
Henry & Elenore Simpatico,
North Bennington, Vermont
(9 Messages, 3 Photo3 - 20 Feb to May 28 2001)
21 Jun 2000
After looking through Mary's Flowers we asked our pastor about the
possibility of establishing a Mary Garden by our Church. He
thought it would be a wonderful idea.
Any help you can give us would be appreciated.
Thank you,
Reply, Mary's Gardens, 15 Nov 2000
This is a very belated acknowledgement and thanks for your message
of June 21st.
We are pleased to learn of your consideration of a Mary Garden for
your parish, and of your pastor's approval.
The undertaking of a parish Mary Garden is a more extensive project
than might appear at the outset. In addition to the planning and
work of designing the garden and planting it, there is the mission
of gaining its enduring embrace as an integral part of parish
spiritual life continuing through the years, so that others
following you will continue the prayerful care of its Flowers of
Our Lady .
To this end, we direct your.attention, on our Mary's Gardens
website, to the outline, "Parish Mary Garden Care" (linked under
GARDENING), suggesting the formation of a self-perpetuating Mary
Garden Guild of parishioners to assume present and future
responsibility for care of the Garden; and also (under GARDEN
PRAYER & MEDITATION) to the two articles, "Parish and Shrine Mary
Gardens" and "Parish Mary Gardens of Devotion and Prayerful Work".
We hope you send us some photos and tell us of your experiences,
for sharing with others in our website Chat and Photos Journal
26 Dec 2000
Thank you for responding to our message. I have become very
familiar with your website and have recommended it to others.
We are now awaiting our statue of Madonna della Strada from Italy.
It's place is all ready - that is a brick arch in the yard next to
our church, St John the Baptist in North Bennington, Vermont.
Right now we have planted many spring tulips and daffodils and are
trying to plan the gardens. I know it will evolve as we go along.
We will be planting many perennials from your lists and I know this
year will need many annuals to fill in.
One problem I have is that I don't find many annuals on the lists
that grow well here and I was wondering how "purist" we need to be.
For example, cosmos and Echinacea grow very well here but I don't
find them on any list. Is it possible to go by color?
As soon as I can I will send pictures to be used on the chat box.
Thank you again and I hope to hear from you.
29 Jan 2001
We are still anxiously awaiting the arrival of a statue of Our Lady
for the new Mary garden being established at our parish
church,St.John the Baptist in North Bennington, Vermont.
We started the plan for the garden after receiving a copy of
Vincenzina Krymow's "Mary"s Flowers". In the fall the site was
prepared and spring tulips and daffodils planted. The winter months
are being used planning the perennial and annual flowers to be
planted this spring. Spring comes late here in Vermont and we are
zone 4 for planting. I have spoken with one of our local garden
suppliers for perennial plants and she is excited about helping
with the plans.
Here is a photo of the garden site, awaiting arrival of the statue
and the flowering of the first spring bulbs.
We will keep you posted with other pictures as we progress.
Reply, Mary's Gardens, 17 Feb 2001
Thank you for your messages of 26 Dec, and of 29 Jan with Photo
In answer to your question about annuals, my suggestion for the
spring sequence (from zone 7 and 6 experience, but adjustable to
your zone 4 maybe by a month's later spring and earlier autumn) is
that as soon as the soil has thawed and dried out enough to dig -
viz. the start of spring planting time - you purchase (if you have
not forced them yourselves in glass cold frames) a quantity of
pansy and English daisy biennials, and plant them as border plants
so you will have the "instant" color parishioners will be looking
for. Snowdrops may have bloomed before this (they're blooming in
Philadelphia now, after a February thaw), but you will have
bordered beds for the daffodils and tulips you mentioned, and other
spring blooming bulbs and tubers, such as crocus, hyacinth, iris,
etc.. These will then be followed by the spring blooming perennials
starting with cowslip primroses, lungwort, violets, periwinkle etc.
The borders will probably continue until June (maybe pansies bloom
all summer in Vermont) - when roses, lilies and biennial foxglove,
Canterbury bell and Mullein etc. bloom. In June the original
border plants will probably become tired and leggy and should be
replaced by low annuals such as marigolds, petunias, impatiens,
ageretum etc. which will maintain border color for the summer and
fall-blooming perennials, until frost. Also, at this time taller
annuals may be planted, more centrally in the beds.
In preparation for this you may want to grow from seed some of the
annuals not commercially available as plants - starting them on
sunny windowsills in seed trays 4 - 6 weeks before frost free
outdoor planting time, and then bringing them along in cold frames
and then nursery beds until they are in good growth and bloom for
transplanting to the garden beds in late May or June. I have in
mind here the tender annuals from our Latin American tropicals
list, or from the list of 200 - also calendula, zinneas, tall
marigolds, morning glory vines, etc.
You say, however, that you don't find many annuals on the lists
that grow well there and you wondering how "purist" we need to be;
saying that cosmos and echinacea grow very well there but you don't
find them on any list, and therefore ask "Is it possible to go by
color?"
Yes it is indeed possible to go by color. As you approach a Mary
Garden from a distance, the first thing you notice is the color
symbolism. The "mother" Mary Garden at St. Joseph's Church, Woods
Hole, features "Mary's colors", white (for purity) and blue (for
fullness of grace) in a border planting of white, and blue,
petunias. Color symbolism is the basic symbolism followed at the
Mary's Garden at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the
Immaculate Conception in Washington - with dominant white for the
Immaculate Conception. Other gardens have featured beds or areas
of white flowers for the joyful mysteries, red and purple for the
sorrowful, and yellow/gold for the glorious, with flowers
individually symbolic of Mary's life, privileges, virtues and
prerogatives planted around Our Lady's statue.
16 Feb 2001
We wanted to let you know that the statue for our church Mary
garden arrived from Italy yesterday. She is more beautiful than we
could have imagined and we will send you a picture as soon as she
is in place. we are getting very excited about the project and know
Mary will bring us many blessings.
Reply, Mary's Gardens, 17 Feb 2001
Thank you for the good news that the statue has arrived and that
you are highly pleased with it.
We look forward to seeing some photos.
As you form a group of parishioners to work with you in the garden
this spring, we recommended that you read "Establishing and
Maintaining a Parish Mary Garden", newly posted to the website and
written by our Mary's Gardens Associate, Paula Mucha, from 10 years
of Parish Mary Garden experience.
From our experience through 59 years, in which we have seen some
Parish Mary Gardens endure and others come and go, we are
increasingly confirmed in the observation that those which endure
do so because they have been incorporated as an integral part of
parish spiritual life.
It is our belief that for this to take place, the Parish Mary
Garden is to be perceived as more that a beautiful expression of
existing Marian devotion, or a special honoring of Mary by growing
around her statue the flowers named for her in medieval tradition.
What is dscovered by those working devotionally in Mary Gardens is
that the Flowers of Our Lady offer in their planted mosaic a
composite distillation of symbols quickening reflection and
meditation on the fullness of Mary's life, privileges, virtues,
mysteries and divinely endowed prerogatives.
This gives a sense of the reality of Mary's merciful presence as
our Spiritual Mother, to whom we are thus moved to turn in prayer
for her divinely endowed motherly prerogatives - in her intimate
co-redemptive union and close cooperation with Jesus, her Divine
Son and Lord - of our protection, healing, guidance, advocacy,
intercession and universal spiritual mediation.
In our present day world where we see the seemingly intractable
religious, social, political and economic alienations which stand
in the way of the "peace process" of building God's Peaceable
Kingdom of truth, justice, love and freedom, "on earth as it is in
heaven", it becomes increasingly evident that these alienations
cannot be overcome by purely human means alone. We see ever more
clearly that to overcome them requires the guidance and operation
of divine grace, light, wisdom and power - for the bestowal of
which we are to make prayerful recourse to Mary's divinely endowed
universal spiritual mediation; and for the reception and
instrumentation of which we are to emulate Mary's purity, openness
and responsiveness of heart.
It is this specially unctioned symbolic distillation of Marian
doctrine by the Flowers of Our Lady, and their consequent
quickening to Marian devotion and meditation, and to prayerful
recourse to Mary's endowed prerogatives, which is the unique
contribution of the Mary Garden to parish spiritual life.
And it is the challenge to members of the Mary Garden Guild caring
for the garden to become attuned to this meditative quickening of
the Flowers of Our Lady - an introduction to which is the website
article, "Gardening With Mary" - and to introduce other parish
members to it, beginning with direction of their attention to the
plant markers indicating the symbolic religious flower names.
20 Feb 2001
Thank you for your letter.
The information on choosing the flowers was very good and I have
been thinking in the same light. I have started some seeds
(petunias/impatiens) and have more to begin. For sure there will be
pansies as soon as the ground allows; and unless we have an
unusually warm summer, they do last all summer. I think I also
mentioned that I have the help of one of our local perennial and
annual suppliers.
Henry and I feel very blest to be able to undertake this project
but our main concern is how to make sure that its main focus is to
bring people to Mary. Our parish is small ( about 600 families)
and we do not have a school, only a religious education program.
We used some of our youth group to help take rocks out of the soil.
We know we have to establish a guild or society to bring the
proper focus and continuity to this work. Right now I have 3 or 4
people who have garden experience and also have great devotion to
Mary. My thought is that for this year we work together to
establish the garden, knowing full well that will not be complete
for several years. I hope from this group that a guild/society
will evolve in the next year.
Your website is so helpful and I do appreciate your time and
concern but most especially I am grateful for your prayers that our
garden may be a source of devotion to Mary. I feel she will bring
many blessings to our parish long after we are gone.
I'll keep you posted on our progress.
28 May 2001
The Mary Garden exhibit at the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center in
Washington is beautiful. It is clearly on display with other
creative people, such as artists, poets, etc. Yours is in the
center of the group - very eye-catching.
First Spring Blooms, from Fall Planting
Meanwhile, back at the Mary Garden here in Vermont, the daffodils
and tulips have just about finished. We have spent last week
between raindrops planting many annuals. These include petunias,
pansies, marigolds, larkspur, snapdragons, asters, zinnias,
alyssum. It had been very dry here so we are very grateful for the
rain. Now we need sun! Some of the perennials that we have planted
are Bleeding Heart, Lady's Mantle, Primroses, Madonna Lilies,
Day Lilies, Lamb's Ear, Monkshood, Cascading miniature roses (in the
urns), Columbine, Foxglove, Lavender, Lupine, Jacob's Ladder,
Dianthus, and English Daisies. They seem to be doing very well.
When I have a complete list I will send it to you.
I have met with a group of about 6 women and we discussed the
spirituality of the garden. I used the help you sent and they seem
very enthusiastic. We are starting a Mary Garden Corner in our
weekly bulletin. Two have been in, per the enclosed copies and I
have had good response from them.
Garden Dug for Spring Planting
St. John The Baptist Weekly Bulletin May 20, 2001
MARY'S GARDEN NOTES
A Mary Garden is a garden dedicated to Mary, Mother of God. In a
Mary Garden, a statue of Mary is surrounded by flowers and herbs
which have special significance for her through legends or naming.
Early Christians and especially those of the Middle Ages kept the
memories of Mary alive thru legends. They saw her attributes in
flowers and herbs growing around them and named them after her."
The statue of Mary in our garden is THE MADONNA DELLA STRADA and is
based on the painting by Roberto Feruzzi in Venice in the late
1800's. All the flowers in the garden will be those from a list of
over 500 researched by a group formed in the 50's to promote
devotion to Mary.
Flowers now blooming are Daffodils, known as Mary's Stars. Tulips
were Her Prayers, Forget-me-nots known as Mary's Blue Eyes.
St. John The Baptist Weekly Bulletin May 27, 2001
MARY'S GARDEN NOTES
Look to the Flower, Think of Mary
This is the time of year when many of us plant annuals in our
gardens. ln Medieval times many were known by Marian names. As we
plant them, may our gardens become a source of many blessings and
remind us of the Blessed Mother. A few of the well-known flowers
are:
Alyssum - Mary's Flower
Marigolds - Mary's coins
Impatiens - Mother's Love
Asters - Mary's Stars
Petunias - Our Lady's Praises
Zinnias - The Virgin`
Geraniums - Lady Beautiful
Morning Glory - Our Lady's Mantle
Pansies - Our Lady's Delight
23 Sep 2001
I apologize for being so long in writing but I do want to tell you
that the garden has been beautiful, per the enclosed photo.
The garden is still looking lovely. We have not had a frost yet -
quite unusual for this time of the year. We are getting ready to
plant tulips in front of Mary's statue, asking for her prayers.
Last Sunday we had a beautiful prayer service there for the victims
and rescue workers at the World Trade Center Twin Towers. There
were over a hundred people including other faiths (a very good
number forÊour community). Our pastor gave a beautiful reflection
on the sorrowful Mother urging us to pray to Mary and to join in
her suffering.