Chat and Photos Starting the Mary Garden
Prayer Service for 9-11 Victims
Dedication and Blessing
4 Photos
Plant List and Planting Plan
St. John The Baptist Parish Mary Garden
Henry & Elenore Simpatico,
North Bennington, Vermont
Dec 23 2002 John Stokes, Mary's Gardens
I'm glad you liked Dedication and Blessing CHAT posting.
Together with the St. Elizabeth Seton Parish Mary Garden posting,
it should be most helpful to those from other parishes in seeing
how "they can do it" too.
One thing special re. the presentation of the St. John the Baptist
Mary Garden, for the website, is the fullness of bloom, per the
Dedication photo.
If you can send me two planting plans - one for the spring
blooming bulbs, perennials and biennials (pansies, English
daisies, etc.), and one for the summer and fall blooming annuals
and perennials, I'd like to make two virtual garden plans, similar
to those link-indexed under
GARDEN PRAYER AND MEDITATION
Virtual Mary Gardens
Introductory 12 Variety Annuals Mary Garden
Popular Flowers of Our Lady Mary Garden
See also
Sorrowful Mary Garden
Early Blooming Bulbs and Plants
The plan you send could be a simple numbered line drawing and
plant list, such as that link-indexed under
OVERVIEW
Representative Mary Gardens - Descriptions, Photos
Mother Mary Garden
1 Plant list and Planting Plan
b - Planting Plan #10, 1937
2 - 1982 Adaptation with Plant List and with
numeric keys of plant locations - as posted
at the Garden.
I'll post and index this as a 4th, cross-referenced, CHAT entry
for your garden and set up hot-links from the garden design
section
Such a virtual plan for an actual garden will give a mediative
sense of the garden as well as a plan of the planting
Also, for this, I'd like to have a photo of just the statue and
enclosure, with dark background, which I could extract for use
with the virtual plans, per the focal figures in the first three
virtual gardens listed above. I can of course adjust the statue
and plant sizes for proportion. If necessary, I can simplify a
bit. Could you send such a photo? I could probably extract the
one from "First Spring Blooms, from Fall Planting", in the first,
"Planning" CHAT posting, but I'd like a little more detail on the
statue..
This will serve as an example for others starting parish Mary
Gardens.
For this I'll probably insert on the website an index item under
OVERVIEW of Exemplary Parish Mary Gardens, listing the 6 or so for
which we have details so far, plus hoped for new ones, and would
like to have one with a clear planting plan.
Dec 29 2002
I will mail some pictures to you tomorrow and you will easily be
able to see our use of annuals. However, I will have to wait until
the garden clears of snow to accurately identify all the perennials.
I know where most of them are but it will be more accurate for me
to look at the garden and identify them.
You do so much for Mary...We are so grateful.
Dec 29 2002
Here are the pictures we promised.
The first is the picture we used on the program (in
black-and-white).
You can readily identify the annuals in bloom:
- petunias (I started these from seed)
- marigolds
- pansies (this year we had beautiful blue shades)
In front of the statue are
- snapdragons
- cleomes
- zinneas (of all color sand heights)
- alyssum
In the urns
- geraniums
- petunias
- ivy
In the circle in front of the benches
- alyssum
- pansies
Other annuals throughout the garden
- cosmos
- globe amaranth
- silene
- calendulas
I'm sure you can also see in the picture some of the pwrennials,
such as
- columbine
- lavender
- lambs ear
- lilies
- veronica
- coneflowers
There are also
- baby's breath
- bleeding heart
- lupines
- several small juniper bushes
Behind the statue there are
- roses
(One, from Jackson & Perkins, is called "Our Lady of
Guadalupe", and we are hoping it survives the winter.
The others are shrub roses or shrublets, which do well
here. Throughout the \garden are miniature roses, very
healhy in this climate.
In front of the statue in the spring will bloom tulips, daffodils
and crocuses, and there are more of these throughout the garden.
These are just a brief sketch and I will send a more exact list
with a plan in the spring.
Thanks again for all you do for Mary.
Jan 11 2003 John Stokes, Mary's Gardens
Thanks for the letter and photos.
I have scanned the photos, and will make a separate CHAT posting -
to be added to when you send your fuller plant list and planting
plan in the spring.
Your horticultural skills shine through the photos - the matured
plant sizes, the fullness of bloom, and the overall proportioned
and harmonious composition, etc. - which serve so beautifully to
honor Our Lady and serve as a setting for the plant symbols.
I assume the several small juniper bushes are evergreen and give
body to the beds in winter and early spring.
A few quick thoughts. A great advantage of your zone 4 cool is
the continued blooming of pansies though the summer and fall. Here
in zone 6, 7 they become "leggy" in June, as do the English
daisies, and have to be replaced with annuals. How do English
daisies do in your summers? Because of their half-hardiness they
are great for putting out early, with pansies, as borders for the
spring bulbs.
I don't see impatiens (patient Lucy) on your list. This
half-hardy perennial is treated as an annual here, and blooms and
grows profusely throughout the growing season.
Jun 17 2003 John
Several things I've recently encountered have specially brought to
mind your St. John the Baptist Parish Mary Garden.
The first is the mention in Maureen Gilmer's "Gardening With God"
of the legend that the red dots on St. Johnswort appeared when it
sprang up from the blood drops of beheaded St. John the Baptist
(celebrated August 29).
The second is that when I recently prepared a research summary of
Flowers of Our Lady from "De Plantis A Divis Sanctisve Nomen
Habentibus" by Johannis Bauhin (Basil, 1591) for the website
RESEARCH
Research and Documentation
2003 - Medieval Latin Religious Names of Plants
I noted, additionally 25 "St. Johnswort" flowers and was reminded
that I had found in some extensive research I did in the folklore
stacks of Harvard's Widener Library in 1980 that these were
evidently named not just because they bloomed around the time of
the Feast of St. John the Baptist, June 24, but because they were
bundled together by the faithful in "girdles" and cast into the
fires of St. John's Eve for a believed scapegoat ridding of the
effects of their sins - largely a religious folklore custom, not
officially endorsed by the Church.
For your interest at St. John the Baptist Parish Mary Garden, I
have posted some of these research excerpts, and my thoughts about
them, from three letters from myself to Bonnie Roberson October 26,
28 and 30 1980, posted to the website - starting a section
ARCHIVAL
Developmental Correspondence
(This is a section I plan to develop from 100's of pages of
developmental correspondence between myself and Bonnie, Bro. Sean
MacNamara of Ireland, and Nan Sears of the Annapolis Mary Garden,
1980 to 1994 - before I allocated full time to the website in 1995.
To this end, Lisa Creamer and Paula Mucha have transcribed 2/3 of
my longhand letters to Bonnie; but Bonnie's 100 taped letters still
have to be transcribed. I'll probably do this myself - listening
and then verbally digital-transcribing - as the tapes are much
interspersed with personal matters which should be deleted. Happily
m letters to Bro. Sean and Nan were written on word-processor,
which I started to use in 1984, and are therefore already in
digital form.)
While thinking about this, I recalled that i reported extensively
to Bonnie the plant procurement and development of my Boston
windowsill Mary Garden
GARDENING
Indoor Windowsill Mary Gardens for Schools
which will serve as a step-by-step account of starting an indoor
Mary Garden, as your CHAT messages, and those of Julie Henry at St.
Elizabeth Ann Seton Parish in North Huntingdon, PA and Deborah Pein
at St. Anthony's Parish in Pocatello, ID do for parish Mary
Gardens.
(In this connection, I'm looking forward to the receipt of your
planting plan sketch for adding to the CHAT entries.)
Prayerful best wishes,