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                                               Intro Mary Garden

The Flowers of Our Lady

     Mary, "The Garden Enclosed," is said to be symbolized by all
gardens.

     Our Lady, "the Flower of the Field," is held to be symbolized
by all flowers.

     All blue and white flowers are associated with Mary as bearing
her colors.

     The Rose is an emblem of Mary in art, poetry, and the liturgy.
In some regions the Carnation replaces the Rose in art. The purity
of Our Lady is denoted, chiefly, by the Madonna Lily.

     The Rose of Sharon, the Lily-of-the-Valley, and some other
genera and species bear titles attributed to Mary in Sacred
Scriptures.

     Candlemas Bells, Assumption Lily and a number of other
cultivated plants and wild flowers have names derived from the
liturgical season of bloom in the European areas where the names
originated and became established.

     Mary's Gold (there are several), Rosemary, and some other
plant life have their associations with Mary because of old
legends.

     Madonna's herb, Our Lady's Delight, and certain other wild
flowers and horticultural material are also associated with Our
Lady by name . . . but the origins of the associations are left to
our conjecture.

     The largest number of cultivated and uncultivated plants which
we know to be associated with the Virgin Mother are named so
because they evoke images of womanly work; or they bear some
physical resemblance to personal or household articles; or they
have, in some particular, a resemblance to the female form.

     Besides "Mary's Gold," there exist several other groups of
plants of entirely different genera or species which bore identical
Marian names.  We incline to a conjecture to cover these instances
of different plant life receiving identical names in old popular
Christian tradition.

     It seems to us that, the religious symbolic plant associations
having entered into use in one area, they came to be reported to
other regions mainly because of travels: through missionaries,
monks and friars, pilgrims, members of the Crusades and other
warriors, the wandering scholars, roving singers and travelling
players, and merchants.  The people of a region chose to give the
general, basic religious associations to native plants of their own
countryside that were suitable for conveying them.

     Holding to such visualizing of the centuries when Europe was
the center of Christendom, keep in mind that those centers of
religion and learning, the monasteries, were places of refuge and
offered hospitality for travelers.  In fact, a supplementary
practical purpose for locating some monasteries - on the
pilgrimage routes, for example - was to fill a dire need: safe and
honest hostels, the reduction of severe hardships of travel,
protection from local robber bands, and freedom from petty
swindling and gouging by tradesmen.  Also, the monks were adept in
agricultural and horticultural works and the monasteries were
almost the sole repositories of knowledge for such pursuits.
Being dedicated to religion in the sense of a binding to God, the
monks (like their transient guests) were probably the main sources
for the spread of plant and flower "love names" of religious
association or significance.

     Begin now to use the timeless Christian names for plants and
flowers as an aid to the restoration of Christian religious sense
to gardening.  Help, also, by growing some of the many plants
bearing Christian religious names from the research and lists of
Mary's Gardens.


Edward A. G. McTague


Copyright 1955, 1996, Mary's Gardens