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                                               Intro Mary Garden

Indoor Mary Gardens for Shut-ins

By Merrill A. Maynard

The Marian Era X, 1971


(Editor's Note: Merrill A Maynard, blind horticulturist, tells us
how to prepare and take care of an Indoor Mary Garden, and offers a
poem he has written about such a garden.)


     The bedfast and shut-in finds it a great attraction to combine
religion with hobby activity.  At the Nazareth Village, home of the
Holy Family, there surely was a garden.  Monasteries and shrines
feature Mary Gardens based on an ever-increasing list of plants for
botanical, folklore, and other associations with Christian thought.

     The first Mary Garden on the American Continents is still
viewed by tourists at Woods Hole, Cape Cod, Massachusetts.  Mrs.
Bonnie Roberson directs an apostolate wherein she is still
designing Mary Gardens in the United States and Canada.  From her
generosity I am stimulated to offer the proposal that bedside Mary
Gardens may afford opportunity for an Act of Prayer as well as a
Place of Prayer.  It is already quite popular to make dish gardens
featuring a suitable statue and foliage or flowering plants adapted
from the gigantic Mary Garden index of plants.

     Two pamphlets of the U.S.D.A. afford guidance: House Plants,
and Decorating with Indoor Plants.  Ferneries, dish gardens, and
planters afford many stimulating possibilities.  However, a rather
new approach is use of the terrarium as a center requiring a minimum
of uncontrollable situations.

     As a group service activities effort, making terrarium Bedside
Mary Gardens seems to be almost ideal.  Local gardeners will help if
they have a starter list to go by.  Aquarium supply shops may be
useful in assembling suitable equipment.  As a source of room light
it will afford a focus if desirable, or may be set at a point of
less imposing presence if preferable. However, whether an individual
or a group is to make up the Garden, a basic information list is
vital.

     Choice of a statue will depend mostly on local supply and
desires of the person for whom the garden is intended, but it is
well to supply one to stand moisture and sunlight conditions of
outdoors.  The Hummel figurine called Our Lady of the Flowers
fascinates me, but it is best to know preferences of the recipient.
It is a marvelous conversation piece too. Ever so many will
appreciate it.



                          MEET MARY

           A poem design on living leaves can pray,
           Perhaps their flowering reciprocates
           The greatest glory worship of the day-
           Our inwardness of soul to heaven relates.
           Our guilt escapes environment to cry:
           As Pilate, or as Lady Macbeth, wash hands;
           With filters clear the water and the sky,
           And chemical reversion clean our lands.
           New flower power blooms from self desire
           Each soul, self giving, joins the Light of truth,
           Involved, united praying for the entire
           Reflection of the sun of daily youth.
           From Eden to Gethsemane to find
           Nazareth Village meeting in my mind.


                                         - Merrill A. Maynard


Reprinted with permission.