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                                               Intro Mary Garden

Knock National Irish Mary Garden

Br. Sean MacNamara

Queen of All Hearts, May-June, 1989

.
     On a wet Thursday evening, August
21st, 1879,  fifteen people watched -
for about two hours - a heavenly vision
consisting of Our Lady, St. Joseph, St.
John, the Heavenly Lamb and adoring
Angels at the Church of St. John the
Baptist in Knock, Co. Mayo, Ireland -
now the National Irish Shrine of Our
Lady, visited by over a million
pilgrims annually.

     Many readers of this article will
know of the famous Rosary priest, Fr.
Patrick Peyton, born in Mayo and a
regular visitor to Knock.

     Were it not that in 1972 I had
read in one of Ireland's weekly
Catholic papers about the Mary Garden
movement established in Philadelphia      
in 1951 by John S. Stokes,               
Jr., and the late Edward A. G. McTague, 
the chances are we would not now have     
our Irish National Mary Garden at the
Shrine.                                      Our Lady of Knock

     On sending an inquiry to Philadelphia,
I received much valuable information about the planting of Mary
Gardens, thanks to John and his co-worker in 1972, the late Mrs.
Bonnie Roberson, of Hagerman, Idaho.

     Then, after receiving a copy of the History of St. Joseph's
Church, Woods Hole, Massachusetts in 1982 from Miss Jane A.
McLaughlin, in which there was a reference to the first public Mary
Garden in the United States, planted in the grounds beside the
church in 1932, I felt the need to establish a similar garden in
Ireland.

     I had hopes for such a Garden at Knock, and it turned out that
the late Monsignor James Horan, Director of the Knock Shrine of Our
Lady, also heard about the Mary Garden at Woods Hole; and in June,
1983, when the New Blessed Sacrament Chapel opened at the Shrine, he
had the first public Mary Garden in Ireland started at it by Anne
Hopkins Lavin, Shrine horticulturist. He was much interested in the
concept of the National Mary Garden with representative Flowers of
Our Lady from all 32 Counties of Ireland, and encouraged me to
develop the appropriate planting plan.

     The garden consists of eight beds, two on the left and two on
the right of the statue of Our Lady. Across from the statue is
another bed, while three beds touch the walls of the Blessed
Sacrament Church.

      .

                 Raised Knock Mary Garden Bed

     A distinctive feature of this unique garden is the use of
attractive perforated limestone rock from Lough Mask for the statue
grotto and the retaining walls of the raised garden beds.

     The Knock Shrine Mary Garden, the first such garden in the
world at a national Marian Shrine, has about 73 different species of
plants which are all associated with Our Lady. The planting plans
developed by myself, and a lot of information about plants
associated with Our Lady, can be studied in a booklet entitled The
Knock Mary Garden.

     Working regularly with plants associated with Our Lady is a
means of entering into the piety of medieval Christians, whose
thoughts were never far from Mary. Gardens, especially Mary Gardens,
remind us of Our Heavenly Mother, the Mystical Rose and naturally
lead us to her Son.

    .

      Mary Garden Planting Pours Out Into Shrine Grounds



Reprinted with permission  (Illustrations added)