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Intro Mary Garden
A New Look on Mary Gardens
Our Lady's Solar Greenhouse
John S. Stokes, Jr
Our Lady's Digest Fall, 1983
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On the Feast of the Annunciation, March 25, 1981, what is
believed to be the first solar greenhouse dedicated to the Virgin
Mary was blest by Father Francis Herbert and Father James Shinnick
at the home of Ernest and Bonnie Roberson in Hagerman, Idaho.
Our Lady's Solar Greenhouse, together with the Roberson's home
vegetable and herb garden and fruit and berry orchard, is a unique
extension of the religious symbolism and graces of the Mary Garden
to the practical work of growing food, and represents the
culmination of over 25 years of religious love of nature and
gardening.
Through the years, this love of Bonnie's and Ernie's grew from
an interest in rock collecting and the religious lore of plants to
the planting of an entire Mary Garden of symbolical Flowers of Our
Lady, to developing Dish Mary Gardens to bring this devotion
indoors, and finally - when reduced, retirement income made it
necessary to grow their own food - to enlarging the Mary Garden
concept to incorporate Our Lady's Solar Greenhouse and encompass
their total gardening work.
Through this they now see their gardening work as means for
their own support, for sharing with friends and neighbors, and for
illuminating a dimension of importance to the general
self-sufficiency, "small is beautiful," cooperative, appropriate
technology, environmental protection movement - within the scope of
the broadest religious concept of building the Peaceable Kingdom and
renewing the Face of the Earth.
Their first joint gardening undertaking in 1955, was a herb
garden started as a hobby and as a means of supplementary income -
drawing on Bonnie's love of religious and other herb lore and her
experience in growing herbs since the early 1940's. By 1957, two
years later, with Bonnie working during the day and Ernie assisting
in the evenings and weekends after returning home from his job as
member of a mobile maintenance crew for the Idaho Power Company, the
garden was developed to include more than 100 varieties of herbs,
which were shipped as plants, dried herbs, sachets and pot-pourris,
and was written up in a full-length illustrated article in the
"Eastern Idaho Farmer." They named the garden the "Garden of
Memories".
In 1958, as a fuller expression of her love of religious plant
lore and her religious devotion, Bonnie planted a 60 ft. x 30 ft.
Mary Garden of symbolical Flowers of Our Lady as named in the old
folk traditions of the medieval European countysides. She did this
after learning of the first garden of such flowers, the Garden of
Our Lady at St. Joseph's Church, on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, planted
in 1932. She designed the garden and selected the symbolical plants
for it with the help of information and plant lists provided by
Mary's Gardens of Philadelphia, brought to her attention through the
National Catholic Rural Life Conference in Des Moines.
.
Her magnificent Mary Garden, incorporating mostly flowering
herbs named for Our Lady, quickly became so well known that busloads
of visitors, including garden clubs and Sisters from several
convents, came to see it from as far away as Boise, 100 miles
distant. In 1960 Bonnie planted Mary Gardens at St. Benedict's
Hospital in Jerome, Idaho and also at Mercy Hospital in Pocatello,
Idaho, for Sisters who expressed a desire for one after visiting her
garden. In 1962 Bonnie was asked to exhibit a reduced 12 ft. by 6
ft. replica of her Hagerman Mary Garden at the annual national
meeting of the Herb Society of America, in Washington, D.C.
In terms of her own life, Bonnie found that the Mary Garden was
becoming more and more a prayerful work of praise of Mary, through
the religious symbolism of the plants and flowers, and through the
votive offering of her love of God's plant creatures and of her work
of caring for them. And while she was away from the garden, just
the sight or thought of it gave new meaning also to her work in the
Garden of Memories, to her housework and to her entire day.
.
To bring the Mary Garden into her home, Bonnie designed some
miniature dish Mary Gardens, incorporating tropical and semitropical
plants named for Mary in rural Latin America, of which she learned
through her own research. Planted in small containers, around
statuettes of Our Lady - of which she soon accumulated a large
collection - these miniature Mary Gardens enabled Bonnie to continue
her gardening devotion indoors with plants and blooms through the
winter. Soon she prepared photographs and descriptions of such Dish
Mary Gardens for numerous newspaper and magazine articles showing
hew they could be made and cared for by the sick and shut-ins, and
in homes and classrooms generally, where an outdoor Mary Garden
might not be feasible. For five years she presented displays of
such gardens at annual meetings of the Idaho Council of Catholic
Women.
Bonnie also designed and planted miniature herb Mary Gardens of
fragrant and tactile symbolism for the blind, and in 1966, with a
grant from the Sears foundation, she designed and supervised the
construction and planting of a raised 94 ft. x 3 ft. outdoor garden
of such herbs at the State School for the Blind in Gooding, Idaho,
for which she received a citation from the Governor of the state.
During this period Bonnie worked so vigorously and successfully
with Mary's Gardens of Philadelphia, first as a cooperator and then
as full partner in this non-profit religious work - in helping
others start Mary Gardens nationally and internationally, as well as
locally - that in 1968 the headquarters of Mary's Gardens were moved
from Philadelphia to Hagerman, under her responsibillty.
Although Bonnie discontinued the Garden of Memories business in
order to be able to devote all available time to carrying forward
the extensive Mary's Gardens correspondence, research, speaking and
writing, even today she and Ernie still grow over 300 different
kinds of herbs, for their own use and for gifts and enjoyment for
their friends and visitors. As recently as two years ago the herb
garden was photographed and written up in an article in the Twin
Falls Times News.
In 1975 when Ernie retired
from his job, he and Bonnie
decided that instead of
resuming the Garden of
Memories business or seeking
some other type of home
industry or part time
employment to supplement his
pension income, they would
start a full-size vegetable
garden and fruit orchard to
grow most of their own food
and thus make a major reduction
in their cash living expenses.
In addition to saving money
they would be able to grow the
finest quality of vegetables in
the totally organic top-soil
they had built up through the years in order to grow herbs of the
best flavor and fragrance for the Garden of Memories. Manure
and compost offered by friends would eliminate the need of any
expenditure for fertilizers for additional areas brought under
cultivation.
Also, as a necessary part of this project, and to save on the
purchase of equipment, Ernie designed and constructed their own
preparation and drying equipment with which to preserve the harvest
from the garden and orchard for their sustenance through the year.
With Bonnie's knowledge of herb seasonings and food preparation,
they devised recipes and means of cooking which would provide tasty
meals in good variety from the vegetables, berries, fruits, herbs
and spices they were able to grow. As it developed, they had
considerable surplus beyond their own needs, which they gave or
exchanged with others, who in turn reciprocated with butter,
cheeses, eggs, fish, poultry and game for protein. Observing their
religlous zeal for sharing, a priest termed the garden, "God's
Acre".
Just as Bonnie had given up the Garden of Memories to make her
time available for the large outdoor Mary Garden, now, to meet their
basic living needs, she had to give up the outdoor Mary Garden to
provde time to assist Ernie with the vegetable garden, and
especially for all the preparation and work of food preservation and
storage, while still continuing her extensive headquarters work for
the international Mary Garden Movement.
While she accepted the giving up of the outdoor Mary Garden as
God's will, and rejoiced at the over 15 year she had had it,
nevertheless the discontinuation of the garden left a gap in her
life, in terms of the house and grounds, that somehow wasn't filled
by the dish Mary Gardens on her windowsills and the planter Mary
Gardens around the outside of the house. It was as though her
devotional work was somehow scattered and at loose ends, without
the visible, tangible focus it had for so many years in the large
Mary Garden and its sculptre of the Virgin and Child.
Then one day, her spiritual yearning received a providential
answer. From their renown for the remarkable quality and quantity
of vegetables and fruits produced by two persons, now in their 70's,
with diminishing strength and more than their share of physical
ills, Ernie and Bonnie were selected in 1980 to be the recipients of
a grant from the Idaho State Department of Energy for the building
of a pilot model thermally engineered passive solar greenhouse,
which they would use to determine and report on the most efficient
means of incorporating such a facility into the practice of home
vegetable gardening and home heating.
. The engineering
principles of passive
solar energy for the most
effective exposure to the
sun; the storage of the
sun's heat in black drums
of water and bottles of
dyed water for nighttime
and cloudy weather; the
use of insulating panels
and blinds to minimize heat
loss at night; and the
control of air circulation
were well established in
the state of the art - but
Ernie putting finishing touches on
Our Lady's Solar Greenhouse
there was much to be learned about the most effective use of such
an energy-conserving greenhouse, and in particular about adapting
the actual needs, latitudes and growth responses of different plants
to the temperatures which could be sustained in different seasons,
and under wide variations of weather such as prolonged cloudiness
or extreme cold.
Overjoyed at this opportunity to extend the growing season and
productivity of the vegetable garden by starting vegetables earlier
indoors, and then moving them out to the garden, by way of
"hardening" in cold frames, and also by carrying some over into the
fall and winter by transferring them back into the greenhouse, Ernie
and Bonnie had no difficulty in deciding to accept the offer.
Also, it was an opportunity to extend their lifetime practice of
sharing with others the gardening knowledge acquired from their
experimentation and experience - and now in terms of the latest,
"appropriate" technology.
Moreover, Bonnie immediately saw a further possibility: that
the greenhouse could provide the opportunity she had been looking
for to restore a greater visible focus for her Mary Garden devotion
and work, on a manageable scale under their present circumstances.
Accordingly, they obtained an agreement from the Department of
Energy that if they provided their own supplementary material and
labor they could double the size of the solar greenhouse, to extend
along the entire south side of their house, and thus have space for
flowers as well as vegetables. In this way they could use half of
it for a Greenhouse Mary Garden while the vegetable tests were
being conducted in the other half. They immediately came to refer
to it as "Our Lady's Solar Greenhouse" - to be dedicated to Mary
under her title of "The Woman Clothed With The Sun".
. After the greenhouse, its
first plants, and its two statues
of Our Lady, as she had appeared
in special association with the
sun's brilliance and power - Our
Lady of Guadalupe and Our Lady of
Fatima - received the priestly
blessing, Bonnie discerned a
whole new order of relationships.
As distinct from her original
outdoor Mary Garden, which had
been a special place "out there"
off to one side of the house and
next to the Garden of Memories,
serving as an inspiration for her
other work, she felt that Our
Lady's Solar Greenhouse was now
the center and heart of her combined house and garden, considered
as one, around which all her life and activities were ordered.
Further, the illuminative view of the flower symbols, and the
love which accompanied this view, seemed to extend throughout the
entire house and grounds and out into the whole world. It was as
though all the materials and energy which flowed into the greenhouse
- potting soil, seeds, plants, sunlight, air and water, and all
those vegetables, berries, fruits, letters and books - were lighted
up as symbols of a new heaven and new earth.
More than this, in accordance with the teaching that "the light
of the body is the eye", she sensed that the blest greenhouse was a
source from or through which flowed the grace for sharing this
illuminative view with visitors, so that they could bring it away
with them to their own homes and work places, as they left with a
little gift of a flower or herb in their hands.
In endeavoring to understand this, Bonnie came to see that the
sacramental blessing of Our Lady's Solar Greenhouse was a twofold
blessing of the flowering plants - both in themselves as symbols of
Mary's pure and obedient participation in the divine plan, and also
as channels of the grace to see these symbols illuminatively. She
understood more clearly how we receive grace directly through the
sacraments and priestly blessing, and also indirectly through blest
holy water, religious articles and religiously blest objects and
places.
Just as Our Lady's Solar Greenheuse, through its location and
function, became the horticultural and spiritual font, sustainer and
heart of all their gardening activities and life, so did the
cultivation of its vegetables and fruits - as well as the Flowers
of Our Lady - bring all the plants within the prayerful compass of
Mary-Gardening. As they worked and lived with the greenhouse
through the first full year, they marveled at the way all plant life
poured out from it into the garden in spring and summer, and then
returned to it in the fall and winter.
And in the winter, when the few carried-over vegetables brought
indoors grew very slowly due to the low intensity of the sun, the
warm temperate and semi-tropical potted fig, lemon and orange trees
continued to bear fruit from stored up energy, and the flowering
plants from those climes bloomed in concentrated intensity around
the figures of Our Lady.
With the space and flexibility of the greenhouse, Bonnie found
she was able to compose various Mary Garden Tableaus of potted
plants positioned around her statues - as they came to bloom. Thus,
she was able to compose gardens of flower symbols of Mary's purity
for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, cactus gardens for Our
Lady of Guadalupe, Nativity Gardens for Christmas, gardens of
illumination for Candlemas, and Angelus gardens of Mary's
excellences for the Annunciation.
The very occasion of the blessing of Our Lady's Solar
Greenhouse was filled with wonder. After months of soul-trying
delays and aggravations awaiting the arrival of components and the
workmen to complete the construction, the greenhouse was finally
closed in in less than a month before the Feast of the Annunciation,
the day chosen for the blessing.
In those few weeks, plants which had been dormant showed new
life and growth from the warmth, but seemed to have no possibility
of blooming by March 25th. Yet just a few days before the
blessing, some miniature red roses, "Madonna Rose", and then white
roses, "White Angel", in planters which were previously outdoors and
now enclosed within the greenhouse, bloomed.
.
Then, on the very morning
of the blessing, a bloom
appeared on a bleeding heart
plant, "Mary's Heart",
overnight as though from
nowhere - a plant Bonnie had
called a few days before, "the
bleeding heart that couldn't",
and also on "the carnation
that bloomed in one day" -
miracles of bloom to this
seasoned horticulturalist,
bringing tears of joy.
Other blooming plants were
brought by relatives and
friends as gifts for the
blessing rite.
"The Bleeding Heart that couldn't"
During this first season - with the starting of vegetable
seeds and plants in Our Lady's Solar Greenhouse; their moving out
into the cold frame and garden; the growth, harvesting and
preservation of fruits and vegetables; and the outward flow of
surplus shared with relatives, friends and visitors, Bonnie came to
see by direct experience how the flowers, vegetables and fruits were
indeed vehicles for the flow of light and grace out through the
blest greenhouse into the larger community.
As distinct from when they had procured their food almost
entirely from stores, to meet their own needs, it now seemed that as
they grew their own food there was always a surplus to share with
others - as there had been previously with the herbs and flowers
they grew. In turn, their giving was reciprocated by hunters and
fishermen, who would drop by for a visit and to share of their own
surplus.
From this Bonnie and Ernie came to see that through their love
of their herb garden, their Mary Garden, God's Acre, and now Our
Lady's Solar Greenhouse, they had come upon a fundamental religious
dimension for the burgeoning self-sufficiency, "small is beautiful",
appropriate technology, home gardening cooperative movement.
It was this: that when families or small groups seek self
sufficiency just for themselves, as "islands", they can eke out some
sort of subsistence by their own labor, and can consume any surplus
they have as "extras". But when there is cooperative exchange and
sharing within the larger community, the surplus is shared by all so
that all have a variety of surplus and everyone seems the better for
it.
And just as such cooperation cannot come from individually
attempted self-sufficiency, neither can it come from competitive
marketing nor from bureaucratic planning. Free, voluntary,
fruitful, cooperation can only come when the giving, exchange, flow
and circulation of information, experience, equipment materials,
goods, seeds and fruits of the earth are an expression and concrete
manifestation of the exchange of love and grace - under the
providence of God, who created the world to show forth and share the
Divine goodness with all persons. Yet this spiritual outpouring
seems possible only when persons desire to live modestly with
material sufficiency and sharing of surplus, according to the
teaching of the Sermon on the Mount: "Do not store up earthly
treasures . . . Consider the lilies" - rather than seeking ever
increasing accumulation.
For many years Bonnie and Ernie had lived by the adages, "waste
not, want not", "eat it up, wear it out," and "make do, or do
without"; but now they saw that this was not only for one's own
sufficiency but also to make possible maximum sharing with others.
This enabled them better to see why waste was a serious sin, and
better to understand the words of Jesus when he fed the five
thousand: "Gather up the morsels lest they be lost."
Living by material sufficiency and sharing as a way of life
seems in turn to require the vision, grace and strength which come
supernaturally through the sacraments and sacramentals which Bonnie
and Ernie discerned in their case to be channeled from Christ and
Church to their home and garden through the sacramental blessing
given Our Lady's Solar Greenhouse. This same flow of vision, grace
and strength also served to help them, in the vicissitudes and
disappointments of life, better to bear adversity patiently, forgive
injuries, turn the other cheek, return good for evil, and to
persevere generally - by uniting their sorrows and ills with
Christ's redemptive suffering of his Passion and Cross.
But they were sustained most of all by the vision of how the
exchange, flow and circulation of all material things or goods -
blest as vehicles and channels of grace and light - had a potential
for extension and multiplication everywhere, even on a world basis.
The generalization of the practice of cooperative self-help, with
sharing and fair exchange of surplus, in mutual respect, love and
justice, together with the sharing of appropriate technologies with
all, clearly was a concrete means which would enable the previously
out-competed, exploited or dominated weaker and poorer persons,
families, groups, nations and regions to accumulate materials and
equipment of their own. Further, it would require the rich and the
powerful conversely to adjust their accumulation and growth to what
they can produce from their own agriculture, extraction and
manufacture, and through fair exchange of their surplus for the
surplus raw materials and products of others, and the giving of
their excess.
In the broadest view, Bonnie and Ernie saw that in God's
ordering of Creation, nature is bountiful so that with stewardship,
labor and just exchange, in love, there is sufficiency for all.
There is nothing immutable about the secular economic market
determinisms of wages, prices, interest, investment, profits, taxes,
production and employment that leave so many people and nations in
want, poverty and destitution. Cooperative self-help, in love, can
cut across all this seeming determinism.
With this illuminated vision of a world of cooperative
self-help with sharing and fair exchange of surplus and appropriate
technology, they realized that even their own simplest sharing or
exchange of produce from their garden was, in effect, missionary
work for such a better world.
Looking back at their initial love of plants as God's creatures
and as vehicles of religious legends and lore at the time they
started the Garden of Memories over 25 years ago, Bonnie and Ernie
marveled at the spiritual journey they had traveled by way of the
Mary Garden, God's Acre and now Our Lady's Solar Greenhouse -
praying that it would be God's pleasure to help them share the
riches, joy, light and promise of this journey with others
abundantly.
Reprinted with permission