Mary Gardens celebrate creation

As Mary and Joseph were fleeing with Jesus to Egypt, the story goes, a band of thieves fell upon them. They slashed open Mary’s leather pouch containing the magi’s gold — and out fell beautiful golden flower petals — Mary’s Gold.

Although the tale originated not in Scripture but rather in medieval England, the marigold remains today as an emblem of Mary. Early Christians also connected “I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys” (Song of Songs 2:1-2) with Mary. Lady Slipper, Lady’s Berry Tree, Our Lady’s Rose … a list in UD’s Marian Library names more than 600 plants with Marian names or other Christian symbolism.

The list was compiled by John Stokes and Edward McTague, who met in 1949. Stokes took an economics class from McTague, who wished for an economic system that took into consideration humanity’s stewardship of God’s creation. McTague did not know of Mary’s Gold, but Stokes did because he knew of a garden planted by Frances Crane Lillie in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, that was full of symbolic flowers.

The two men started an apostolate to create Mary Gardens in the United States. Stokes kept a detailed record of their activities. His records, through his contact with Father Johann Roten, S.M., have made it into the Marian Library, where this past summer UD religious studies professor Elizabeth Groppe was a resident research fellow, one of three made possible by the Society of Mary and sustained by UD’s Marian Library and International Marian Research Institute.

The result of her research, “‘To Win Back for Our Lady the Flowers of the Field’: Ecology, Stewardship, and Prayer in the Mary Gardens Apostolate,” was published in the spring 2025 issue of U.S. Catholic Historian.

Learn more from the John Stokes and Mary Gardens, the Woods Hole garden, fellowships at the Marian Library, the Marianist Environmental Education Center and the Saint Kateri Conservation Center (which have information on how to create a Mary Garden using plants native to North America).

A version of this article appears in print in the Summer 2025 University of Dayton Magazine, Page 15. EXPLORE THE ISSUE — MORE ONLINE