A pleasantly sunny day in Shropshire, and I’ve just been out in the garden enjoying the peace and quiet of a Sunday afternoon.
Listening to all that was being said about it being St Patricks Day last weekend set me thinking about another Irish patron saint who gets very little recognition of any sort these days. Saint Fiacre, the patron saint of gardeners.
Fiacre was born in Ireland during the latter part of the seventh century, and brought up in a monastery, where he specialised in the study of healing herbs before going off to France to set up a hermitage there.
He asked the Bishop of Meaux for land for a garden where he could grow food and healing herbs for his followers, and was told he could have as much land as he could surround by a furrow in one day. The Bishop, of course, had expected Fiacre to use a plough, but the wily horticulturalist used the tip of his staff instead, and in that way was able to outline a far bigger plot for his purposes. The garden thus enclosed, became a place of pilgrimage for centuries for those seeking healing.
Rather unexpectedly, Fiacre is also patron saint of haemorrhoids, making him doubly useful for gardeners who spent too much time sitting on the cold stone seats which used to be found in parks and gardens in days gone by.
In the garden, if it isn’t too uncomfortable for you to walk there, look out for the large bright blue flowers, and glossy dark green leaves carried on trailing stems, of Vinca Major, the Greater Periwinkle, still used as a topical treatment for haemorrhoids to this day.