May Altars & Mary Gardens
There is a tradition in Ireland to make May Altars devoted to Mary in the home. For the month of May, a statue of Mary and a vase of flowers is set up on a table, shelf or windowsill. Often the youngest children in the family are tasked with finding the flowers as they bloom to bring inside.
May Altars can be simple, with a small statue of Mary and flowers, or more elaborate, with lace under Mary and candles beside her. The spring flowers are kept fresh through May. The flowers, devotions and prayers are carried inside, an indoor version of a Mary garden.
For advice on how to plant an outdoor Mary garden, I turned to Anita McMahon, a Master Gardener. Anita grew up loving plants and flowers and helping her father with gardening. She eventually began working with him at the same landscaping company.
Anita is a friendly, knowledgeable guide to walk us step by step through how to do a Mary garden.
Step 1 - A statue. “You need a Mary statue. A statue of St. Anne with Mary also works well.”
Step 2 - Location. “You need to pick your spot. You need to figure out where in your yard you want to put the Mary garden. Then you should probably watch the spot and figure out whether it’s more shade or more sun because that is going to play into what you plant there. Certain plants are going to do well in sunlight, certain plants are going to do better in shade.”
Step 3 - Plan on paper. “I’m not an artist but I have a very amateur drawing of my Mary garden. I made a circle because mine is kind of a circle. I wrote where I wanted everything to go. I have the statue of Mary kind of in the front. Ours is in full sun, so I chose mostly things that grow in full sun.”
Step 4 - Plant. “I put tall things in back and I put shorter things in front. Then I arrange them according to what colors I think will go together. I have gypsophila, baby’s breath, around the statue of Mary because it is white. It gets a little bit taller so it works out to surround her. Then I have my bleeding heart behind her. It comes up in the spring. It gets to be about two and a half feet tall and then droops a bit so you can see the bleeding hearts from behind the statue. I have marigolds in front because they are usually golden. I do the petite yellow marigolds because they are short and won’t cover the statue of Mary. Then in the very front, I put alyssum because the alyssum droops over and it makes a nice white, lace-like carpet at her feet. I try to keep the blue and the gold and the white around Mary and then all the other colors I distribute across the rest of the garden. Off to the side is a pinkish-red rose that my mom has had forever. The venidium is an orangish-golden color. The flax is blue. Most of the marigolds are goldish, but some are orange. The columbine can be all different colors. I arrange my Mary garden by color and size.”
I ask Anita for important tips.
– “Wait to plant until the last frost date for your area.” – “You gotta weed, which I’m not good at either!” – “If you have a trellis, morning glories love to climb.” – “It is possible to do a mix of seeds and perennial plants from a nursery. This helps add both the anticipation of the ones to come up, while having plants flowering sooner.” – “Whatever takes over and grows there, so much the better!”
I must make a confession here intended to put everyone without a green thumb at ease. I am an awful gardener. In fact, I’ve given up on growing anything except potatoes. This April a sweet friend gave me a beautiful Mary statue. I love the idea of my Mary statue having alyssum lace at her feet and bleeding hearts to frame her. Maybe one day she will. But for the moment, I placed my Mary statue in the middle of a patch of daffodils about to bloom. As Anita phrased it, I’d created “an instant Mary garden!” The point is, for great gardeners and for more novice ones, Mary gardens are endlessly adaptable in terms of size, space and talent.
Anita beautifully explains why she plants a Mary garden: “In some ways, it is easier to feel like Mary is your mother when you are doing things for her. Just like you do things with your own mother and for your own mother. It is kind of nice to bring things to her and I love flowers. It’s nice to do that, even if it is just for a statue. The prayers go up.”
Both indoor May Altars and outdoor Mary gardens achieve the same result. They put our prayers and our love for Mary, for Jesus’s mother, in front of us. As the seeds and flowers grow, our lives are enriched with grace and our spiritual lives flourish.
