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Intro Mary Garden
1972 Irish Initiatives
Irish Botanical Research and Mary Gardens of Brother Sean
MacNamara, C.F.C.
In 1972, educator, Bro. Sean Mac Namara, C.F.C., of the
Christian Brothers in Dublin contacted Mary's Gardens, USA, for
fuller information on our work with the Flowers of Our Lady and
Mary Gardens. In our correspondence with him, carried forward by
Mary's Gardens Associate, Bonnie Roberson of Hagerman, Idaho who
had assumed primary responsibility for our work in 1968, we
learned that Brother Sean was a researcher of Marian history in
Ireland, a botanical field researcher, and was prominent in the
Irish horticultural world as a flower arranger, as a judge at
flower shows and as a Director and former Chairman of the National
Garden Association of Ireland. At that time he was in the process
of completing a botanical cataloging of the 872 plant species he
had found in his field research in the famous Burren of County
Clare, with its many micro-climates, - which he subseqently
published privately in 1976 as "The Jewels of Thomand".
In her correspondence, Bonnie Roberson shared with Brother her
continuing research into the Latin American flowers named as
symbols of Mary, as recorded by field botanists in their floras,
and also the stages by which she had found the Flowers of Our Lady
and Mary Gardens to be a fulfillment of her personal yearning for a
deeper religious meaning of herbs, flowers and gardening. Brother
Sean in turn aquainted her with the love of nature of Irish Celtic
Christianity and of the Irish gardening saints. Inspired by
Bonnie's work, he undertook research into the extent of the
existence of wild flowers named of old for Mary in Ireland. During
this period he also wrote a number of articles on the Flowers of
Our Lady and Mary Gardens for Irish magazines and newspapers.
.
In 1982, continuing all the
while with his primary teaching
responsibilities, Brother completed
his research of Flowers of Our Lady
he found growing wild in Ireland in
1982, which he listed, by county in
his monograph, "Muire Mhathair". In
all he found 164 species, including
26 "Muire" plants named for Mary in
Gaelic - a comprehensive
documentation of the former extent
of the old rural Irish nature
devotion to Mary.
Through his thoroughgoing
research of the Irish wild flowers
of Our Lady, Brother Sean confirmed
the extent to which the purity,
beauty, colors and forms of flowers
showing forth the beauty and
splendor of God were at the same
time seen to mirror the virtues,
excellences, life and mysteries of
Mary - and especially, through
their purity, her immaculate purity
of heart, through which she responded to the divine call to be the
Blessed Mother of Jesus and to be his close cooperator, on earth
and then in heaven, in his saving and renewing action.
This in turn appeared to support the conjecture that it was
because of the immediacy and ever-presence of heavenly Mary with
us - as spiritual mother, protector, nurturer, advocate,
intercessor, mediatrix, and as the guiding queen of God's emerging
Kingdom - that flowers, everywhere at hand, were so widely
adopted and named as her symbols, quickening reflection on her,
emulation of her, and recourse to her in prayer.
In the unity and correspondences between the world of nature
and the spiritual world of heart, mind, soul, angels and heaven -
both worlds being created through the Eternal Word through whom
all things were made - flowers, the crowning jewels of nature,
through their mirroring of both God and Mary, provided a
culmination of the religious sense of nature.
Also in 1982 Brother Sean wrote for The Irish Catholic a
review of the book, A History of St. Joseph's Church of Woods
Hole, Massachusetts, by Mary's Gardens Associate, Jane A.
McLaughlin, parishioner of St. Joseph's, for the 1992 centennial of
its founding, and describing at length the Mary Garden there - the
first public Mary Garden in the United States. On reading this
review, the late Msgr. James Horan, then Director of the Knock
Shrine of Our Lady, envisaged that such a Mary Garden would be a
fitting planting around the new Blessed Sacrament Chapel to be
opened at Knock the following year, and in the spring of 1983
wrote to Fr. James Dalzell, Pastor of St. Joseph's, for full
information about plants for such a garden. Jane McLaughlin on
behalf of Fr. Dalzell provided the requested information on the
garden planting - based on Flowers of Our Lady native to England
from pre-Reformation times - suggesting that information regarding
other Flowers of Our Lady native to Ireland could be had from
Brother Sean.
Msgr. Horan assigned Anne Hopkins Lavin, Shrine
Horticulturalist, using the information from Woods Hole, to design
the present magnificent Knock Mary Garden layout - of eight raised
beds and statue grotto of attractive perforated limestone rock from
Lough Mask; and contacted Brother Sean for suggested enhancements of
the planting from his experience with native Flowers of Our Lady
growing wild in Ireland.
From his research list of 164 such Irish Mary-flowers, Brother
developed a suggested augmented planting to make the garden a truly
Irish Mary Garden of Irish plants - as distinct, for example, from
the collection in the cloister garden at the Lincoln Cathedral
Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Yorkshire, England, of wild
flowers named for Mary in the countrysides of pre-reformation
England. To this end he proposed, further, that two Irish Mary-
flower species be transplanted to the Garden from each of the Irish
Counties so that the plants of Marian symbolism in the Garden would
have been obtained from the very geographical areas throughout
Ireland where plants of the same symbolism were originally so seen,
named and reflected upon in the wild.
An initial adoption of Brother Sean's suggestions, worked out
with Anne Lavin, was incorporated in the planting in 1986, as set
forth in the list of some 60 plants, with bed locations, in
Brother's 42 page "The Knock Mary Garden" booklet, published in 1987
and available from the shrine gift shop. During this period we
were also privileged to correspond from the United States regarding
the Garden with Msgr. Horan; Shrine Head Custodian, Tom Neary; and
Anne Lavin, as well as with Brother Sean; and wrote an article for
the Knock Shrine Journal on the symbolism of the Mary Garden as
seen in the Shrine setting.
One innovative adaptation of Brother Sean's vision of an Irish
national Mary Garden was made by Fr. Frank Fahey who learned of it
while stationed at Knock and upon subsequent transfer to
Ballintubber Abbey created a Mary Garden there shaped like a map of
Ireland and comprised of the wild Flowers of Our Lady from Brother's
list of 60. This is one of numerous Mary Gardens inspired by Knock,
another of which, adopting Knock's raised bed concept to facilitate
the reading of plant name markers and the examination of their
symbolical forms, is that established at Our Lady's Parish,
Wangaratta, Victoria, Australia by Pastor, Fr. Jim Byrne after a
pilgrimmage visit to Knock.
In September, 1987, Brother Sean moved from Dublin to
Balinrobe, Co. Mayo, near Knock, enabling him to make frequent
visits to the shrine and to consult and work with Anne Lavin in the
Mary Garden.
Then, in 1993 he retired from teaching duties and returned to
Dublin, where he was given the opportunity to make a memorial
Mary Garden planting at the burial plot at the Oratory of the
Resurrection at Artane - a magnificent garden horticulturally and
the first one he was able fully to design himself.
In the fall of 1996 Brother transferred to a Christian
Brothers residence in Tullamore, Co. Offaly, complete with
greenhouse and garden, where he has been designing indoor dish Mary
Gardens and on May 26, 1997 established a niche Mary Garden and
miniature grotto in a nook of the community garden.
Those wishing to obtain further information on the Flowers of
Our Lady and Mary Gardens in Ireland may write to:
Bro. Sean MacNamara
The CBS Monastery
Tullamore
Co. Offaly
Ireland
Photo: The Knock Mary Garden Booklet, 1987