Institutional Mary Garden StartUp
Jun 16, 2007 - Marcy Pfeifer to John Stokes, Mary's Gardens
I'm planning a new Mary's Garden at my church, St. Francis Xavier
Cathedral, Green Bay, WI.
I am hoping to start a correspondence with you and continue it
throughout my experience.
I am finding a wealth of information on your web site, and I'm
very grateful! Thank you for all that is posted, and for leading
me in the correct path for this devotion to Mary.
Any additional information or help you could provide would be
appreciated. Mostly, prayers for the success of our garden and a
connection via email to you would be wonderful.
Thank you and God Bless You!
Sincerely,
Jun 26, 2997 - John Stokes to Marcy Pfeifer
Thanks for your message of 16 June.
Apologies for the delay in replying.
I will be pleased to correspond with you during the development of
your St. Francis Xavier Cathedral Mary Garden in Green Bay.
In the 57 years that we have been researching the medieval Flowers
of Our Lady and assisting in the starting of Mary Gardens we've
learned a lot, from which I'll now draw for you here "off the
top", with website references.
First, here are three books which beautifully, with scholarship,
set forth the scope of flowers of Our Lady and Mary Gardens
tradition. Reviews are click-indexed under OVERVIEW on the
Mary's Gardens website homepage, at:
www.mgardens.org
(Note: A number of references will be made in the following; and
to make it simpler for you, and others of our group, or future
inquirers, to read, the present message, in addition to being
e-mailed, is being being posted to our website www.mgardens.org
CHAT section, indexed at:
CHAT
Mary Garden Chat and Photos
Institutional Mary Garden Start-up
with click-links for quick access to, and return from, all
files underline-referenced here.)
Mary's Flowers, Gardens, Legends, and Meditations by Vincenzina
Krymow, with illustrations by A. Joseph Barrish, S.M. and
meditations by M. Jean Frisk - October 1999, St. Anthony Messenger
Press, Cincinnati, and Novalis, Toronto, 192 pages, hard cover, 55
color illustrations. Review
"The Liturgy of Flowers in a Mary Garden - A Contemplation", Andrea
Oliva Florendo, 2004, 160 pages, 75 colored images - Rosetti Della
Virgine Books, Oliva and Florendo Publishers, Rosetti della Virgine
Books, New York. Review
"The Flowers of Exeter - The ideas concealed within the Decoration",
M. W. Tisdall, 2004, 67 pges, 93 color illustrations - Charlesfort
Press, 23 Furzehatt Road, Plymouth. PL9 8QX. UK., January 2005.
Review
As distinct from home Mary Gardens, where the interest is
sustained and the plant varieties are chosen of which the
symbolism is personally meaningful and motivating; which are
commercially available - locally or by shipment; and which fall
within the gardening skills of the family (purchase retail as
developed plants, have shipped from nurseries as small plants, or
start from seed - indoors, or outdoors in nursery beds) . . .
. . . as distinct from these - parish, shrine or institutional
Mary Gardens require that specific practical consideration be
given: first to the plants that can be procured, planted and
initially maintained by those taking the garden initiative; and
then to a selection from these of those which it is judged can be
maintained through the expected on-going level of interest and
gardening skills of those who will maintain the garden down
through the years - preferably members of the organization, but
sometimes employed maintenance and grounds keepers.
Next, members for a self-perpetuating committee or guild should be
recruited who will do the actual digging of the garden beds;
prepare the soil - adding sand and humus to the probable initial
clay soil, and also fertilizers (preferably organic) and lime, as
required; procure and assemble the plants; make the initial
planting; take care of (at times daily) watering; and preform the
bed edging, weeding, flower "deadheading", plant trimming, winter
mulch protecting and plant replacement (including fall bulb
planting) through the year and years.
Once the plants have been selected, the tentative site selected
and agreed to (preferably with 5 or more hours of sunlight in the
growing season), and a suitable focal statue and pedestal
procured, a garden design and planting plan should be developed,
with accompanying plant list - with the names and addresses of the
sources for each, and an estimate of the initial procurement and
annual replacement costs. A copy of this should be kept on file
at the organization office.
As a final preparational step - assuming the foregoing matters
have been resolved, with acceptance by the organization
authorities and committees, and by recruited members of the Mary
Garden guild - permanent garden bed plant markers should be
prepared for each plant variety - giving plant religious and
common names.
We started out with stick and tag markers, or more permanent dymo
label plastic markers, and even large lettered wooden markers; but
have found that just about everywhere, these all tended to
disappear through the years, with planting reduced to a few most
easily procured and maintained varieties, with the absence of any
notice of the symbolic plant names - just "a pretty garden for our
Blessed Mother".
What have proved to be most durable and lasting have been smooth
flat light grey stone markers with weatherproof black ink
lettering, per the accompanying photo from our click-indexed
website article (to keep stones small, additional text, per this
photographed stone, not recommended for multiple marker use.):
(first referenced file):
OVERVIEW
...Articles
2002 - Serenity Pines Mary Garden, University of
Dayton
Clematis/Virgin's Bower
Two Outlines of general Parish Mary Garden care organization are:
OVERVIEW
. . . Articles
1997 - Parish Mary Garden Establishment
2001 - Establishing and Maintaining Parish Mary Garden
and of actual design and plant selection details:
GARDENING
Starting Your Mary Garden
(Introductory)
d - Introductory Annuals Mary Garden
For New Gardeners
f - Mary Garden Digging, Planting and Tending
For Experienced Gardeners
2 - Mary Garden Design and Plant Selection Guide
3 - 240 Plants USDA Hardiness Zones 3-7
(Green Bay - Zone 3)
Perhaps among your parish members there are some "Master Gardeners"
who, taking courses and participating in programs, are informed and
experienced with the above basics, and are showing up in communities
nation-wide with some assisting in the care of parish Mary Gardens.
Two parish Mary Garden start up correspondence exchanges are:
CHAT
Feb 20, 2001 - Henry & Elenore Simpatico, North Bennington,
Vermont - Starting St. John The Baptist
Parish Mary Garden
Apr 22, 2002 - Julie Henry, North Huntingdon , PA -
Starting St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Parish Mary Garden
Recently, a number of parishes have established Rosary
walks in their Mary Gardens, as described in
CHAT
Mary Garden Chat and Photos
Jun 22, 1998 - Carolyn O'Boyle. Newton, NC - St.
Joseph's Parish Rosary Walk
M a y 2 6 , 2 0 0 1 - D e b o r a h P e i n , P o c a t e l l o , I D - N e w S t .
A n t h o n y ' s P a r i s h M a r y G a r d e n ; photos
M a y 2 7 , 2 0 0 3 - D e b o r a h P e i n , P o c a t e l l o , I D - S t . A n t h o n y ' s
P a r i s h M a r y G a r d e n U p d a t e ; P h o t o s
and
RECENT
Parish Rosary Gardens - in depth study
which has internal click-links to two articles in diocesan
weeklies on parish Rosary Gardens, and to photos of 62 flower
symbols quickening meditation on aspects of the 20 Mysteries.
Also, weighty correspondence regarding the physical components of a
Rosary Mary Garden:
CHAT
Mary Garden Chat and Photos
Apr 7, 2007 - Kathy Hodges - St. John Neumann Catholic
Church, Annapolis, MD - Parish Rosary
Garden
A major aspect through the years has been the development
of flower meditations, beginning with our initial inspiration,
which Mary's Gardens senior Founding Partner, Edward A. G. McTague
expressed as:
Inspiration
The Mary Garden is an act of faith.
It is first of all a picturing in your imagination of its
Flowers of Our Lady - named as symbols of the Blessed Virgin
in medieval times - with loving reflection on their meanings.
That garden is an appeal to the heart. May it be that as you
envisage the Flowers of Our Lady they bloom spiritually
within your interior life.
Then, with your garden stewardship, foliage, buds and blooms
will come of God's creatures the seeds, in due season and
according to his established order - in veneration of the
Blessed Virgin, and quickening recourse to her in meditation
and prayer.
An early practice of this is set forth in:
OVERVIEW
. . . Articles
1955 - In Mary's Garden
Development along conventional devotional lines 1950 - 1964 is set
forth in articles from that period in:
OVERVIEW
57 years of Mary's Gardens Articles
Then in 1964-1966, we exained our devotion critically in the
context of Vatican II and St. Louis de Montfort's "True
Devotion...", per
ARCHIVAL
Developmental Correspondence
Vatican II Marian Devotional Update 1965-1966
then mystically, in the 1980's in:
Developmental Correspondence
1981 Letters, Bonnie Roberson, Hagermann, ID
1982 Letters, Bonnie Roberson, Hagermann, ID
1983 Letters, Bonnie Roberson, Hagermann, ID
1980ff Letters, Bro. Sean MacNamara, Ireland
and applied to Garden Development in the 1990's:
Developmental Correspondence
1990-1997 - Letters, Nanette Sears, Annapolis, MD
Then, with the setting up the website in 1995, a number of
devotional articles were self published for the Internet:
GARDEN PRAYER & MEDITATION
(22 articles)
These culminated in a focus on meditations in Rosary context, per:
OVERVIEW
...Articles
2004 - Flower Meditations on the Five Luminous
Mysteries
2005 - Parish Rosary Gardens - in depth study and
HOME & SCHOOLS EDUCATION
2005 - Background Reference/Index for Teachers
which led to a focus on reparations, as requested by Our Lady at
Fatima and Akita, to advance the world towards the culmination of
Creation in Kingdom, per the "Our Father", for resurrectional
transfiguration in the Eternal New Heaven and New Earth:
(various)
2002 - Peace on Earth - Fatima revisited
2003 - Diane C. Farr, Elmira, NY - Mary Garden of Virginal
Consecration
Oct 8 2005 - (Reparational consecration to the
Immaculate Heart of Mary)
2004 - Flower Meditations on the Five Luminous Mysteries
of the Rosary
2006 - Reparation Through Flowers
2007 - Moments With Mary Co-Redemptrix
Once we perceive the reality that with the resurrection of our
bodies in the transfigured Eternal New Heaven and New Earth we will
spend the eternity of our spiritual lives with God, Blesssed Mary,
the saints, and all our resurrected Brothers and Sisters in Christ
in contemplatively rejoicing in the infinity of acts of love and
the greater glory of God on earth, preserved in the heaveny Book
of Life - then each such act here and now takes on special
significance. Thus, in the beauty of Creation, each loving garden
composition and nurtured flower blooming; each perfection of plant
care; and each discovery of and reflection on the flower mirroring
of revealed truths, here and now, is to the perceived greater
glory of God for all eternity.
While all the above is rather extensive (compressed from over 57
years), the underlying flower and garden meditations chronicled
were simple, illuminative ones, in Rosary context, based on
several hundred time-steeped flower symbols of medieval oral folk
tradition - from before printing and literacy, and distilled from
biblical texts, the Church Fathers, saints and theologians; as
circulated by itinerate preachers, mendicant friars, wandering
minstrels, roving players, pilgrims, merchants, missionaries and
other travelers.
At the same time extensive correspondence was entered into in
popular Marian devotional mode with people inquiring via our
e-mail address at:
manysgardens@mgardens.org
which devotion is comprehensively summarized (still in draft) in a
"living history" assembly of e-mail correspondence, photos, press
reports and appreciative notes of the:
Brodeur Mass Pike Wayside Marian Flower Shrine
erected in thanksgiving for a cancer cure in 1973 on a property
adjacent to the turnpike, and maintained by three generations of
the Brodeur family serving to quicken the devotion and prayers of
thousands of Mass pike travelers.
Marcy, I thank you for your inquiry, inspiring this overall
compendium of information buried in the 1,300 files of our
website - much, much more than you asked for (which is covered in
the first few paragraphs).
I'll be happy to answer any questions which may come up for your St.
Francis Xavier Cathedral Mary Garden project.
Blessings,