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                                               Intro Mary Garden

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Planting of the Entire Knock Shrine Site

John S. Stokes Jr.


     In designing, planting and working in the Mary Garden at the
new Blessed Sacrament Chapel of Our Lady's Shrine at Knock -
conceived by Shrine Director, Msgr. James Horan in 1983 - Anne
Hopkins Lavin, Shrine Horticulturalist, envisaged that the Shrine
floral tribute to Mary should be enlarged to embrace the entire
shrine grounds as a Marian Meadow, with the Church and and
Apparition Gable as the central focal point.

     Accordingly, she and her horticultural co-workers undertook a
massive planting of flowers, as described in The Knock Shrine
Annual for 1991:

                       "Magic Carpet of Colour"

          "If some of us had, over the years, thought of Knock as
     a grey colourless place we would surely have had second
     thoughts last summer.  Early in the spring, Anne Lavin and
     her team of gardeners were busily at work planting and sowing
     thousands of bulbs, plants and seedlings.  Between them they
     created a magic carpet of colour. It was something that must
     have been noticed by all pilgrims, as several spoke of its
     beauty.

          "Every available inch of the Shrine grounds was filled
     with magnificent blooms: roses, gladioli and delphiniums rose
     above swathes of antirrhinums, poppies and petunias - a
     magnificent blaze of colour stretching from the Gable almost
     as far as the eye could see, and, as it happened, seen mostly
     under a blue sunny sky.  It was a new and splendid attraction
     at Knock, comparable with any formal garden wherever one
     might seek it, and a perfect setting for peaceful
     meditation."


     This marvellous planting served as a prophetic fulfillment of
the lines of Liam Brophy's poem, "Gardens Give Mary Glory":


               "These are the loveliest of her litanies,
             These are gardens where the glad abounding earth
               Still gush the Holy Spirit's primal mirth
             In endlessly renewed diversities.


     It also placed the shrine planting within the tradition of
the garden of St. Fiacre, Irish patron saint of gardeners, who
planted his garden of healing flowers and herbs around an oratory
of Our Lady in France.

     On approaching the Shrine grounds, those of us accustomed to
devotion to Mary through her flower symbolism, are brought to
reflection on her titles of "Flower of the Field" and "New
Paradise of Eden".  Also, the large sweeps of flower colors bring
us to reflection on the white flowers of Mary's purity, the blue
on her fullness of the waters of grace, the red on her love of
God, the purple on her sorrows and the gold on her glories.

    The flowery meade of the Shrine grounds, growing up "within
the radius of Our Lady's presence", as Pope John Paul II has
described the grounds of Mary's appearance shrines, can be seen as
a response of flowering nature to the coming of nature's Queen.
At this national Irish Marian Shrine, they thus represent and
signify all offerings of flowers to Mary, including the wild
flowers named for her in the Irish countryside and the gardens
dedicated to her through the centuries.
     
     Approaching more closely, we note the symbolism of the flowery
meade: roses (Mary's Love), gladioli (Ladder-to-Heaven), delphiniums
(Mary's Tears), antirrhinums (Infant Jesus' Shoes), poppies (Jesus'
Blood Drops) and petunias (Mary's Praises), and others.

    .

    Then, coming as Shrine pilgrims to the Apparition Gable
with its sculptured respresentation of Mary's silent appearance
there in 1879 with St.Joseph and St. John and Angels at the
Heavenly Altar of the Lamb that was Slain, we note the large rose
at Mary's forehead and her crown on her head - signifying that she
appeared there as Queen of the Most Holy Rosary.  Further, the
channeling position of Mary's hands, held up before her and facing
each other, signify her heavenly shaping of the spiritual blossoms
or bouquets of our Rosary prayers rising from earth to heaven with
our Paters and Aves - as she directs them into confluence with the
sacrifice of the Lamb transported upwards to the interior of the
Trinity by the circling angels.

     Surrounding this focal tableau re-enacting Mary's heavenly
mediation and enhacement of our prayers, the thousands of flowers
of the shrine grounds are now seen to represent all the Rosary
Prayers of earth; and the bouquets placed at the tableau represent
the prayers offered there by us in our homage as pilgrims.

     As the first massive planting of a Marian shrine grounds with
flowers, Knock epitomizes floral offerings to Mary, "the
Flower of flowers" on earth and in heaven.

     Within this overall context of flower tributes and devotions
to Mary at Knock, the eight-bed Knock Mary Garden and Grotto at
the Shrine Blessed Sacrament Chapel - with its plant groups,
identified by attractive markers, of many additional symbolical
Flowers of Our Lady - serve to give further depth and historical
perspective to Marian flower associations.  The Mary Garden, which
served to inspire the planting of the entire Shrine grounds as
Marian Meadow thus ever continues to serve as a distillation of
Marian flower devotion.

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Copyright, Mary's Gardens 1997

Photos: Our Lady's Shrine, Knock