29 Sep 1991, John

Thank you for your letter of August 18th and its enclosed beautiful
Mary-Flower paintings and poems - which I just caught up with, due
to summer travels. It is so good to hear from you again!

I appreciate your telling me more about yourself, and as I wrote
you initially, in June of 1988, it is a special joy to learn of you
as a young person with such a deep and beautiful love of Our Lady
and her flowers.  As I mentioned to you in my first letter, those
of us who are carrying on the work of spreading the growing of the
Flowers of Our Lady and Mary Gardens are all in our 60's and
(mostly) 70's, and today our thoughts are more than ever on the
continuity of our work - with the hope that, providentially,
younger persons will come forward to carry on the dissemination of
the idea and provide information for persons newly seeking it - and
forward to the next generations.

This is an extension of the vision of Frances Lillie, founder of
the Woods Hole Garden of Our Lady in 1932 - which Father James
Galvin C.SS.R reported in his 1946 article, "Lillie Tower", which I
sent you previously and which was our inspiration and providential
summons: "it was a beginning. And brightly she looked forward to a
day when 'the right person' would turn up ... a gardener who would
make it the passion of his or her life to choir our Lady's glories
in blossoms . . . ".

Fortunately there are now additional major public Mary Gardens
through which new people can learn of the Flowers of Our Lady
especially at Knock, of which I sent you Brother Sean's booklet,
and now more recently at historic Carroll House in St. Mary's
Parish, Annapolis, Maryland. But these are repositories of the
idea, which ever requires the emergence of new committed persons to
keep the movement vital and growing, until the end of the world.
There are younger persons on the committees at Woods Hole and
Annapolis, and hopefully one or more of them may be moved to take
on a major personal commitment in this area.

Also, Brother Sean has been encouraging the formation of a
committed lay custodial group in support of the Mary Garden at
Knock - now maintained, and very beautifully so, by the
professional shrine horticulturist (a young person) midst all her
other responsibilities, although she has not had the time to
implement Brother Sean's full National Irish Mary Garden planting
plan prepared by him at the request of the late Shrine Director,
Msgr. Horan.

Without the active presence of loving, dedicated, committed
persons, even public Mary Gardens can become "landscaping" and
museum-like "collections" of religious lore, instead of the
continuation of a living tradition. This was the case at Woods Hole
when we first learned of it in the 1950's, although it was
physically sustained by its adjacency to the St. Joseph's Angelus
Tower, also given by Frances Lillie - who had the wisdom and means
of establishing a trust fund for the maintenance of both. Her
brother-in-law, Wilfred red Wheeler, a nurseryman and builder, who
had actually built the tower and planted the garden, continued to
maintain the Garden through his workmen - but more out of
commitment to Mrs. Lillie (who was invalided at that time) rather
than to idea of the Mary Garden.

The Garden itself was lovely, but the planting plan had been
abandoned in favor of a few summer annuals typical of other gardens
in the area, and there was no posted Garden plan, list of plants,
literature, or an address from which information could be obtained.
It requires the loving attention of a dedicated person or persons
to make sure the Flowers of Our Lady are fully presented to garden
visitors. A neighbor across the street, Mrs. Goffin, told me Mrs.
Lillie used to sit in the Garden many hours reading just waiting to
explain the names and symbolism of the Flowers of Our Lady to
visitors coming in from the street.

Before Edward McTague and I started Mary's Gardens we were able to
contact Mrs. Lillie by phone in Chicago. She was invalided and
confined, with nurses around the clock, but our call got though to
her through the providential "accident" that being a long distance
call from Philadelphia, where we learned later one of her daughters
lived also, her nurse let her accept the call thinking that it was
from a member of her family. Mrs. Lillie seemed overjoyed to hear
from us, and gave us her blessing when we told her how we proposed
to carry on her work from Philadelphia. The nurse was good enough
to send us a copy of Mrs. Lillie's 1932 Garden leaflet and some
other information; and then, later that year, Ed and I drove to
Woods Hole and, by appointment, met with Wilfred Wheeler, and also
the landscape architect, Dorothea Harrison, who had designed the
garden for Mrs. Lillie.

Mr. Wheeler agreed to restore some of the flowers in the original
plan, but actually only a few were planted. I was able to visit the
garden each year to do what I could to this end, and gave a slide
lecture to the pastor and parishioners, but they felt it was in the
hands of Mr. Wheeler.

One memorable day however, in the summer of 1954, when I was
spending a week's vacation in the area, the Pastor, Father
Stapleton (who used to take Communion to Mrs. Lillie daily at her
summer home) told me Mrs. Lillie, after many years, was feeling a
little better, and that her daughters thought it would be a nice
birthday present for her if I could visit her for tea. I of course
dropped everything and immediately accepted the invitation, and had
most joyous visit with her, telling her of the spread of our work,
inspired by her. It was rather laborious because she couldn't hear
very well, and had little memory of details; but she communicated
to me her spirit and her love for Our Lady's Flowers. For my part,
I was able to give her as a birthday present a little postcard I
had picked up in the area - a Swiss postcard of Bleeding Heart,
giving the French name, "Coeur de Marie" and the German one,
"Marienhertz". She had not known of this symbolism previously (not
being in her English research), and was transported with joy - the
high point of the visit for me, in that I was able to give her
something in return for all she had given to us and the world.
Subsequently she became critically ill again, and she died a year
or two later, in her eighties (on Candlemas).

After her death and that of Wilfred Wheeler, Mrs. Lillie's cousin,
Florence Gigger, took on responsibility for the administration of
the trust fund and the actual details of the Tower and Garden
maintenance and care as I wrote in the introduction to Mariana I -
and a further partial restoration of the Garden planting was made.

However, Mrs. Gigger was unable to carry on after a few years, and
it wasn't until 1981, that a St. Joseph's parishioner, Jane
McLaughlin, who was writing a history of St. Joseph's Church for as
1982 centennial - also the golden, fiftieth jubilee of the Garden -
uncovered some important information about the Garden in the
archives of the Woods Hole historical Society, including a complete
set of planting plans and plant lists, and with the permission of
the Pastor, Father Dalzell, undertook an authentic restoration of
the Garden according to its original plan. In the course of this
she contacted me, I was able to give her the additional historical
information I had obtained from Frances Lillie, Wilfred Wheeler and
Dorothea Harrison, and much other information. Also, Bonnie
Roberson, our co-worker from Idaho, (who came to us "through the
mail" in 1957), and I were able to assist in the procurement of
some of the plants, such as the old roses, etc..

I tell you all this, Diane, first of all for your interest, but
also to show how the vital, interior, tender, loving heart of the
Mary Garden devotion rests in individuals, not in Gardens, and to
suggest that you view your hope of getting your drawings and poems
published in terms of their fuller potential for furthering the
spread of this gardening custom of devotion and praise.

What is most important of all is the encouraging of the inner,
tender, loving, commitment - the"true devotion" - to the Flowers of
Our Lady and Mary Gardens, which will provide ever fresh personal
inspiration to others through the years. Your flower paintings have
the unique quality of such love and devotion, and I share the
suggestion you report of your family and friends who have seen your
paintings that they should be published in some form that will
enable them to be more widely circulated and appreciated.

While some years ago we used to sell seeds, literature and a few
pieces of garden statuary as a means of spreading the idea, and
also of making conveniently available to others the necessary means
for acting on the idea by starting Mary Gardens (when the research
had not discovered so many flowers now available from roadside and
mail order readily nurseries), and also to help defray some of our
expenses, which were mostly paid out of our own pockets, we could
see that there was never any money to be made through a work of
this type (and this was not our objective). Also, while we had
thousands of people on active mailing lists back in the 50's and
early 60's, the mail order sale of books was minimal.

So, our counsel to you, Diane, is to envision this as a labor of
love which will be its own immediate reward; and also to make it an
act of faith - knowing that R will touch hearts and enrich lives in
providential ways that you may not fully know about, and will be
discovered years from now in libraries by future persons seeking
out this information.

As examples of the work of some earlier Mary Flower artists, I
enclose, as our gifts to you, Katherine Pinchard's 1953 Kalendar of
"Our Lady Mother and some of her graces", and Beldy's 1956 "Our
Lady's Book of Flowers". As St. Louis de Montfort says, "Of Mary
there is never enough", and your artistic labors of love have their
own precious uniqueness which should be made known, too, as was the
work of these Artists.

I corresponded with Miss Pinchard, then in her seventies, back in
the 1950's, and learned that she was quite infirm, almost
invalided, and the creation of these calendars was at that time her
principal work and special devotion. She did kalanders of Our Lady
for a number of years, but only two of them were based on her
flowers. I recall that they were privately published by a
retirement home where she was living; whereas Beldy's book was
published, as indicated on the title page, by the Assisi Press in
Dublin.

I suggest you give consideration to the possibility of adopting the
calendar format for your work because it provides a flexible way of
presenting both flower paintings and poems, etc., and only requires
twelve pages and maybe a cover, to get started. And then there's
always a need for another each year.

Also, in our age of personal computers and "desktop publishing", it
is something that can be produced on personal home computers of the
type which are now owned by increasing numbers of individuals these
days. Possibly someone in your family or circle of friends might
have, or have access to such a computer and the necessary
accessories, or there might be a free lance desktop publisher in
your area.

Until recently, we had to think in terms of getting an article or
book manuscript "accepted' by an editor or publisher who judged
they could profitably publish it. And this is still of course a
desirable possibility to be explored today. But we don't have to be
limited to this, and, as I said, have the alternative of
"self-publishing".

Just now, there are becoming available color scanners which
electronically copy color paintings so they can then be composed or
"laid out" with text on a personal computer and printed out on a
color printer. The quality of printers is being improved almost
monthly, and very soon there will be available those which can very
accurately reproduce the colors such as those in your paintings.

We are waiting for this ourselves, but in the meantime are able to
produce our own black-and-white literature pieces (which can be
reproduced on office copiers), such as the three enclosed leaflets
we prepared for the Carroll House Mary Garden in Annapolis,
Maryland. Previously, we used to have to waft for an article to be
accepted and published, and then have reprints made from the
printing negatives made and paid for by the magazine - to keep the
expense down to something we could afford.

Another advantage from "doing it yourself" is that you can make up
smaller quantities as needed, rather than investing in a lot of
inventory.

We don't know how well computer screens are suited to your eyes,
but others perhaps could assist you. We favor the Apple Macintosh
computers and the accessories produced for them by Apple and
others.

There are probably some people in your area who offer such desk-top
publishing from their homes at a reasonable cost.

Local book and stationary stores might be willing to display
calendars for sale, and you could send "review copies", for mail
orders, to selected Marian magazines, which are listed, along with
others, in the annual "Catholic Almanac". Such calendars would make
lovely Christmas gifts.

Then, after a period of time, you might be able to publish the same
paintings (kept in computer disk storage) in book format, which
could also be composed and published by computer. Or, of course,
you could go ahead with the book first, and then follow up with
calendars each year.

Each calendar could mention that information was available from
your address (at a dollar or two to cover costs and mailing) on the
Flowers of Our Lady and the starting of Mary Gardens, and we could
set you up with supplies of lists and article reprints, etc. as we
have at Woods Hole; with Bonnie Roberson; with Brother Sean in
Ireland; and currently at Carroll House.

And all this can be done under the "umbrella!' of Woods Hole, Knock
and Annapolis Mary Gardens, which will in turn be more visited
because of your work

This goes way beyond what you inquired about, Diane, but I did want
to put the potential of your paintings in the broadest light. This
is because we feel an obligation to do what we can to support the
continuity of this work. Providence has brought a sequence of new
persons to us - each typically beginning with a simple letter, like
yours; so we feel it incumbent upon us to to follow up each one
with a presentation of the full range of opportunities, because we
never know who may be moved by the Spirit to come forward.

I am pleased you were able to obtain a copy of "The Englishman's
Flora!'. It gives such a fine sense of the origins of the
Mary-names of flowers in the countrysides. Seed for Cardamine
pratensis, about which you inquire, used to be listed, I believe,
in the Thompson & Morgan seed catalog from England, but I haven't
looked at a copy for a number of years. Mrs. Nan Sears who has been
the prime mover of the Carroll House Mary Garden, in Annapolis,
mentioned to me that she had a copy of this catalog, so I will ask
her for you, and will also mention to her about your paintings. I
have not been able to produce a successor to Mariana 1, with a
larger list of plants, but continue to remain hopeful about this.
Neither have we been able to pull together a book, so pray that we
may be able to do so soon.

Thanks again so much for your letter, Diane. Such expressions from
the heart are what we treasure most in our work.

Sincerely yours in Our Lady,