Mary's Flowers: Gardens, Legends and Meditations

Pleasance Crawford, a Canadian landscape and garden-history writer, is
the co-author of The Canadian Landscape and Garden History Directory and
Garden Voices: Two Centuries of Canadian Garden Writing.

This book is about the lore surrounding flowers whose names, colors, or
other attributes have, over the centuries, become
associated—especially among Catholics—with Mary, the mother of
Jesus. Its author writes for local and regional publications and
contributes to the on-line Mary Page of the Marian Library/International
Marian Research Institute at the University of Dayton. Although
described in the introduction as “a book about Mary’s flowers and
the ancient legends that inspired their names,” the work is aimed less
at those interested in gardening, botanical history, and plant
nomenclature than at those deeply committed to venerating Mary, praying
to her, and meditating on her spiritual qualities.

There are three main sections: a general history of Marian flower
legends and names; stories about 30 flowers, each preceded by a
meditation on its connections with Mary; an introduction to the
centuries-old practice, recently revived, of creating large or small
“Mary Gardens” in which carefully selected plants surround an image
of Mary (brief descriptions and small photographs of five such gardens,
all at religious institutions, are also included here). Appendixes
provide lists and brief comments on more than 200 plants (e.g., Madonna
lily, Mary’s gold, lady’s slipper, rose of Sharon, and virgin’s
bower) said to be named for or otherwise connected with Mary.

The book is generously but unevenly illustrated: the first section with
large and small reproductions of works of art depicting Mary with
flowers; the second with full-page serigraphs created by A. Joseph
Barrish to resemble the woodcuts in early herbals; and the third with
small photographs of the Mary Gardens mentioned above.