Medieval Mary Garden Prints

In undertaking the project in 1951 of spreading knowledge of the medieval flowers symbolically named for Mary and their growing as a prayerful religious work, we first of all looked for a name for the project. We had learned of the flowers from the "Garden of Our Lady" planted in 1932 by Frances Crane Lillie at the Angelus Tower given by her to St. Joseph's Church in Woods Hole, in the leaflet for which, "Our Lady in Her Garden", she referred to the flowers listed as "Her Flowers".

In the course of our research we came across the book, "Medieval Gardens" by Frank Crisp (London, 1924; now reprinted, New York, 1966), containing 100 or so medieval garden prints, two of which were titled "Mary Garden"

With this authentication of the medieval name, "Mary Garden", we elected to call our project "Mary's Gardens", and referred to the flowers named for Mary in medieval times as the "Flowers of Our Lady".

The following are the two medieval prints from Crisp named "Mary Garden", and also a medieval print of "Mary with symbols of Garden and other Attributes" (later regarded as "Immaculate Conception symbols").

The John Stokes and Mary's Garden collection was transferred to the Marian Library in May 2013. In addition to his archives, manuscripts, artwork, and personal library, John S. Stokes also donated his extensive website. It was transferred to the Marian Library in early 2010. This particular entry is archived content original to Stokes' Mary's Gardens website. It is possible that some text, hyperlinks, etc. are outdated.