Document Type
Report
Publication Date
3-24-2025
Abstract
One of my favorite places to spend a summer Ohio morning is in our family garden of lavender bee balm and ripening cherry tomatoes. But in the summer of 2024, I deepened my appreciation for gardening in the Marian Library as a Marian Resident Scholar. Each day spent in the reading room, I admired a display of some gorgeous Marian artwork including images of Marian flowers drawn by Brother A. Joseph Barrish, S.M.; a botanical rosary by Katrina Rose Harrington; and a painting of Mary encircled by echinacea and monarch butterflies (inset image) by Ann Marie Coolick and Megan Coonelly.
The Marian Library is also home to the John Stokes and Mary’s Gardens archives, and it is was with these archives that I spent my residency. The librarians have digitized some of this archival material to make it widely available in the University’s open-access institutional repository, but given my research and teaching in theology and care for creation, I wanted to learn more. With wonderful support from staff and librarians — Kayla Harris, Michele Jennings, Shari Neilson and Henry Handley — I was introduced to an amazing collection that consists of no less than 58.25 linear feet of carefully curated materials. These include, among other things, newspaper and magazine clippings, garden diagrams, spreadsheets of data on seed germination times and test plots, handwritten letters, photographs, journals, thank-you notes from Girl Scouts and others, and sealed seed packets that rattle with the sound of seed within them.
eCommons Citation
Groppe, Elizabeth, "A Summer Garden in the Marian Library" (2025). Marian Fellowships and Other Sponsored Research in the Marian Library. 8.
https://ecommons.udayton.edu/ml_fellowships/8
COinS
