“This is a spring garden, a real spring garden,” comments Sr Ann Daley quietly as she leads the way through her Mayfield unit. Ann beams, seeing the fruit of her long work and care.
Ann’s garden celebrates the 2024 Season of Creation theme, Hope and act for all creation. It is a living testimony to this call. Amid the challenges, fear, lostness, violence and contradictions in our troubled world, Ann’s garden shows the beauty of what is possible. It kindles and invites hope, calls to act for hope and speaks for “the first fruits of hope.” (cf. Romans 8:19-25)
This is one of the best spring flowerings. It is so beautiful, one has to pause, take in the whole and each little part. It stills one down. It is serene. One is wrapped in beauty.
We pass a stunning, tall-stemmed Hippeastrum with multiple blooms, a gift from her sister. “This is a rare variety” Ann comments, it is white with pink tips.
All around are shrubs, in flower or coming to flower. There are little white daisies. There are Big Red Geraniums that, according to Ann, do not get the diseases that other geraniums do.
Ann enthuses, “Look up at the new green growth at the top of the Crepe Myrtle. The flowers will come at Christmas. It is completely bare in winter. See the massive white blossoms on the lemon tree, just out in the last week or so. The orange blossoms are coming now too.”
The gardens are all weeded and mulched, ready for the hot summer. The mulch, red-gum colour chosen to contrast with the pale tan paths, helps preserve water for the plant.
The roses are just budding. There is Hearts of Fire, with a cream centre and crimson outer petals, that was planted last year. There is golden Glorious, white John Paul, deep red Mister Lincoln and the climbing White Rose, grown from a very old rose at the original convent garden in Lochinvar.
Love of roses is in Ann’s family as both her Mum and her sister, who networks with French growers, are prize-winning rose growers.
Growing bright around the paths are Clivias and yet to blossom Agapanthus
When Ann is not caring for her garden, she is often preparing the church for liturgies, visiting the sick at home and in hospital, taking Holy Communion to the housebound, taking others to appointments. But now, in Spring, Ann shares the joy of her hard work and wants others to be uplifted by its beauty in the journey to hope.
