@Dlaw actually, no Catholic is likely to be offended if your daughter were to equate the Virgin Mary with mother nature.
She's not a goddess but Eastern Orthodox do call her "
god after God" since she is the most perfect exemplar of a glorified, divinized human. We venerate and pray to her as the Mediatrix of all Divine Graces and Queen of Heaven:
Mediatrix of all graces - Wikipedia
Mediatrix of all graces is a title that Roman Catholics give to the Blessed Virgin Mary as the Mother of God; it includes the understanding that she mediates the Divine Grace. In a papal encyclical of Sept. 8, 1894 Pope Leo XIII states the following:
"The recourse we have to Mary in prayer follows upon the office she continuously fills by the side of the throne of God as Mediatrix of Divine grace"[1]
— Pope Leo XIII, Iucunda Semper Expectatione
The Second Vatican Council referred in its document Lumen gentium to Mary as "Advocate, Auxiliatrix, Adjutrix and Mediatrix"
The "
Mary Garden" is a venerable tradition in Catholicism and Anglo-catholicism:
Mary garden - Wikipedia
We have developed many beautiful names for Our Lady (as well call her) based upon nature:
Nature and Mary : University of Dayton, Ohio
Mary was seen as "the Rose wherein the Divine Word was made incarnate", of Dante and of the central rose windows of the medieval cathedrals.
Then - possibly inspired by the "relics" of Our Lady brought back to Europe by crusaders and pilgrims returning from the Holy Land - numerous flower symbols were discovered of Mary's apparel and household articles, for reflection on the life of the Holy Family in Nazareth.
As supports for meditation and emulation, other flowers we seen as symbols of her virtues, excellences and mysteries.
Since flowers were universally present in nature, with similar symbolic forms in various localities and countries, they time and again presented a spiritually quickening surprise recognition - both for the traveller, coming round a bend in the road, and for the villager encountering the new blooms of each season.
Informed of these flower symbols, we, too, can share in such discoveries today as we encounter the very same blooming flower species in all their freshness while walking past city gardens or window boxes; walking or driving through the countryside; or cultvating them in our own Mary Gardens.
When any actual graces are received through the pious emotions, affections or illuminations excited while beholding such symbolical flowers - especially if they have been sacramentally blest, as in a garden - Mary, Mediatrix of all graces, is indeed present through her mediating action.
Frances Crane Lillie, founder of the mother Mary Garden of the present day Mary Garden movement, at St. Joseph's Church, Woods Hole on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, was so conscious of this experience in the garden that she entitled the leaflet listing the Flowers of Our Lady in this garden, "Our Lady in Her Garden".
And for those who have received the gift of the sense of Our Lady's presence, this sense is quickened by the beholding of Our Lady's Flowers.
Persons with such a sense were likely those who first named flowering plants encountered with some likeness to a human form for Mary, such as "Little Mary" (Zinnia elegans), "Queen Mary" (Aechmea mariae-regina), "Our Lady of-the-Meadow" (Filipendula ulmaria), "Our Lady-by-the Gate" (Saponaria officinalis), and "Our Lady in-the Corn" (Papaver rhoeas).
Perhaps you could make a Mary Garden with her and discuss both the botany (science) as well as the symbolic spiritual significance of the different flowers as "
symbols of her virtues, excellences and mysteries."
