To make it easy for you to understand what a Mary's Garden is Please read below.
A Mary Garden is a small sacred garden enclosing a statue or shrine of the Virgin Mary, who is known to many Christians as the Blessed Virgin, Our Lady, or the Mother of God. In the New Testament, Mary is the mother of Jesus of Nazareth. Mary gardens are most common to those Christian denominations which hold the Virgin Mary in special esteem, particularly Roman Catholics and Anglicans. The practice originated among monasteries and convents in medieval Europe. During the Middle Ages, people saw reminders of Mary in the flowers and herbs growing around them. The first reference to an actual garden dedicated to Mary is from the life of St. Fiacre, Irish patron saint of gardening, who planted and tended a garden around the oratory to Our Lady he built at his famous hospice for the poor and infirm in France in the 7th Century. The first record of a flower actually named for Mary is that of "seint mary gouldes" (St. Mary's Gold or Marygold) for the Pot Marigold or Calendula, in a 1373 English recipe for a potion to ward off the plague. The first such garden open to the public in the United States was founded in 1932 at St. Joseph's Church, Woods Hole, Cape Cod, Massachusetts. This garden was founded Mrs. Frances Crane Lillie of Chicago, and a summer resident of Woods Hole. It was Mrs. Lillie's recollection of the symbolic herbs and flowers that she had encountered in England that prompted her to conceive and donate a Mary Garden to St. Joseph's Church. Inspired by the St. Joseph's Mary Garden in Woods Hole, Edward A. G. McTague and John S. Stokes, Jr. founded "Mary's Gardens" of Philadelphia in 1951 as a project to research flowers identified with Mary, and make available seeds and plant source information for starting Mary Gardens. They also initiated a series of articles in religious publications to encourage the planting of Mary gardens.
Having a Mary garden is a very simply way to honor the Blessed Mother, it’s easy to do with children and can enhance our own devotion to Mary as well. It’s not difficult to do and pretty self explanatory. The most important part of the Mary garden are the flowers. What legends and stories do they tell us about Our Beautiful Mother? How are flowers themselves symbols for us of her love and her life?
I hope that this will inspire you to design a Mary's Garden and that you can go out to get and get away from everyday trouble and pray for what your needs are, and enjoy the beauty of nature.
