Our Spring Gardens: A Mary Garden

Our gardens are still very much a work in progress, but while Darren was home all last week we were able to accomplish SO much towards the gardens we envision! A quiet, contemplative Mary garden has been another dream of mine for quite a while now, and I actually started working on one beneath our bedroom window last year but just never did get it finished. This year, Darren and the children were a HUGE help and together, we were able to create a beautiful Mary garden! (Noticeably absent at this point is a statue of Mary, but I'm working on that! I found a really pretty statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe at one of our local garden centers, but I'd really like Our Lady of Grace to grace our garden. I LOVE the look of this one, but would like to shop around locally a little more first.) Anyway, I found many wonderful ideas of how to plant a Mary garden while searching around online, and finally decided to print out this wonderful article to keep as a reference. Ideally, we'd love to continue adding to our garden over time, but here's what we've planted to get us started:

• Rosemary (Mary's nosegay), which was already planted along one edge of the garden
• Honeysuckle (Lady's stick), which was also already growing up the trellis
• Several Roses (these have different symbolic meanings depending on color); I was SO EXCITED to find a Pope John Paul II rosebush at our garden center!!! We also planted one called "Blue Girl", which caught my eye because that's the name of a super-hero character created by Caitlyn, but which also works because, you know..."Lovely Lady dressed in Blue"...it works, right? :)
• Carnations (Mary's Love of God. "These flowers are said to have bloomed at Christ's Nativity, according to a German legend.")
• Marigold (Mary's gold)
• Scabiosa (Mary's pincushion)
• Snapdragon (Infant Jesus' shoes)
• Salvia (Mary's shawl)
• Bachelor's Buttons (Mary's crown)
  

I'd also like to add a small bench or two, although I'm not exactly sure where, and this garden certainly won't be "quiet" or "contemplative"! It will actually overlook the playground we plan to build later this summer, but I'm equally happy with that, too. I love the idea of Our Lady watching over my children while they play!