Long before flower beds were planted for their own sake, the faithful looked out upon the fields and saw in them the image of a Lady. The rose spoke to them of her charity, the lily of her spotless purity, the lowly violet of her humility of heart. To plant a Mary Garden is to embrace a time-honoured and gentle tradition, setting apart a small corner of the garden, however modest, in honour of the Mother of God, and filling it with flowers that Catholics have long associated with her name.
To plant a Mary Garden is to continue this ancient Catholic custom, to set apart a little corner of the garden, however humble, in honour of the Mother of God, and to adorn it with the flowers that Catholic tradition has long consecrated to her memory.
A Garden Enclosed
The devotion has its root in Sacred Scripture. In the Canticle of Canticles the divine Bridegroom sings of His beloved, “My sister, my spouse, is a garden enclosed, a garden enclosed, a fountain sealed up” (Cant. iv. 12). From the earliest centuries the Fathers and Doctors understood these words of Our Lady, the hortus conclusus, the garden closed against all that would defile it, is her Immaculate purity, and the sealed fountain her inviolate virginity. A few verses before, the same Canticle declares, “Thou art all fair, my love, and there is not a spot in thee” (Cant. iv. 7) — the Tota pulchra es that the Church has ever applied to her who alone was conceived without stain of original sin.
The medieval monks and cloistered nuns, whose lives were passed within literal walled gardens, made this image their own. Tending the herbs and flowers of the monastery, they came to see in every blossom some reminder of the Queen of Heaven, and one by one they gave the plants her titles. The Venerable Bede likened her to the white lily, its petals her stainless body and its golden heart the glory of her soul. St. Bernard names her “the violet of humility, the lily of chastity, the rose of charity.” So the whole visible world became a kind of book in which her praises were written, and the garden a silent litany.
The Flowers of Our Lady
At the heart of every Mary Garden stand the two flowers most anciently her own: the lily and the rose. The lily, the tall white Madonna lily that the old painters place in the hand of St. Gabriel at the Annunciation, is the emblem of her virginity and her innocence. The rose, queen of flowers, is given to the Queen of Heaven; the Litany of Loreto salutes her as the Mystical Rose, the Rosa Mystica, and it is no accident that the great Marian prayer is called the Rosary, a crown of roses laid at her feet. The red rose recalls her burning charity and her share in the Passion of her Son; the white, her purity.
Around these the old gardeners gathered a host of humbler plants, each with its legend. The marigold they called Mary’s gold, and strewed its blossoms upon her altars. The lily of the valley they named Our Lady’s Tears, for the drops she is said to have shed beneath the Cross. The columbine, whose petals hang like a cluster of doves, they called Our Lady’s Shoes, and read in it the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost. The soft folded leaf of the alchemilla became Our Lady’s Mantle, the cloak beneath which she shelters her children; the foxglove, Our Lady’s Gloves. And the snowdrop, first to pierce the winter ground, was rung as Candlemas Bells and carried to her altar on the feast of the Purification.
Some flowers keep the memory of the Holy Infancy. Rosemary, the Rose of Mary is said to have received its blue colour when Our Lady, resting upon the Flight into Egypt, laid the Christ Child’s garments upon its branches; the pious added that the shrub never outgrows the height of the Saviour, nor lives beyond His three-and-thirty years. Others recall her sorrows, the blue flag iris, sharp-leaved as a blade, was named Mary’s Sword of Sorrow, in memory of the word of holy Simeon, “And thy own soul a sword shall pierce” (Luke ii. 35). The forget-me-not was the Eyes of Mary, and the strawberry, fruiting even as it flowers, the emblem of the fruitful Virgin.
The Heart of the Garden
A Mary Garden, however, is not merely a collection of plants but a shrine. Its centre is always Our Lady herself, a statue or image set where the eye is drawn, that the whole planting may be ordered to her as, in the designs of God, all creation is ordered through her to her Son. Many follow the old monastic pattern, dividing the ground into four quarters by little paths that meet at her feet; some raise a small grotto of stone, or set the image in a niche against a wall, with a bench near by. A low hedge, a fence, or an arch of climbing roses gives the garden its enclosure, so that in some real way it becomes the hortus conclusus it is meant to signify, a place apart, guarded from the dust and clamour of the world.
A Place of Prayer
Above all the Mary Garden is a place of prayer. It comes into its own in May, the month the Church has long dedicated to Our Lady, when the flowers she loves are in their first freshness and a family may gather to crown her image and sing her praises. There the Rosary is fittingly told among the roses, and the Angelus said at morning, noon, and evening, as the bell would once have called the fields to prayer. On the great feast of the Assumption, the fifteenth of August, the old Roman Ritual provides a blessing of herbs and flowers — Our Lady’s Herbs — and it is a beautiful thing to carry a bundle gathered from one’s own beds to be blessed upon her heavenly birthday. In October, the month of the Rosary, the same ground yields its last blooms before the frost.
To tend such a garden — to weed and to water and to wait upon its slow unfolding — becomes itself a small act of love, and a gentle schoolroom for children, who learn Our Lady’s titles as readily as they learn the names of the flowers. And there is a deeper lesson still. The enclosed garden without is the figure of another garden within: the soul that would be pleasing to God must become, like Mary, a garden shut against sin and open only to Heaven, where the virtues grow as flowers and the Holy Ghost walks in the cool of the day.
A patch of earth and a handful of seeds are little enough to offer. Yet Our Lady, who received the homage of shepherds and the gold of kings with the same tender favour, will not despise the marigold and the violet planted for love of her. Whoever makes for her even the smallest garden makes, in truth, a place to meet her — and may say, standing among the flowers that bear her name, Tota pulchra es, Maria: Thou art all fair, O Mary, and there is not a spot in thee.
For those who would like to begin such a garden, see The Flowers of a Mary Garden: A Planting List for the North — the flowers most closely associated with Our Lady, with their traditional names, their meaning, and notes on growing them in a cold climate.
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