If you ask most people if there is a patron saint for gardeners, they may just scratch their head and say, "no".  Some may venture a wild guess at St. Francis of Assisi.  After all, there are statues of him in all kinds of gardens.  But notice, he is never holding a garden tool or a flower.  He's busy attracting birds and wildlife - and we gardeners don't always welcome some of that wildlife in our yards.

Some of you may have seen statues of a monk that you thought was St. Francis, only this robed figure was actually toting a spade.  This is the real patron saint of gardeners - a mystery saint to most and so appropriate for this Feast of All Saints.  His name is Saint Fiacre.  Here is how the legend came about and how St. Fiacre came to be the patron of gardeners everywhere.

Fiacre was a hermit, and so he established a hermitage, where he had a small garden for growing vegetables and herbs. The vegetables were mainly to sustain life, but he used the herbs to treat ailments, and soon people were coming from all over to seek cures at his hands.  Unfortunately, since being a hermit usually involves living alone, Fiacre's small land and tiny garden couldn't really accommodate the demand, so he went to the bishop asking for more space to enlarge his gardens.

The bishop consented, thus laying the groundwork not only for Fiacre's first miracle, but also for the legend that supposedly made him a woman hater. According to legend, the bishop told Fiacre that he could have as much land as he could dig a trench around in a single day.

Some say he used a spade, while other versions of the story say it was a staff of ivory.  It doesn't really matter, since he didn't use it to dig. Instead he used it to draw a line around a huge area of land, and the ditch is said to have dug itself!  Even huge trees and shrubs miraculously fell out of the way.

It so happens that a woman witnessed this, and went to the bishop accusing Fiacre of witchcraft. This is supposedly what turned him into a misogynist.  The bishop must not have believed it was witchcraft, since, true to his word, he granted the land to Fiacre.  And in fact, without the woman's testimonial, no one might have known that Fiacre had worked a miracle.

At any rate, Fiacre had his plot of land and created wonderful gardens there, with herbs to treat the sick and vegetables that apparently would have made gourmet chefs salivate. It was his success with these crops (as well as his wonderful method of trench digging) that makes him the patron saint of gardeners - and believe it or not, there are statues of St. Fiacre available to watch over your gardens.  Statues of St. Fiacre used to be quite plentiful in Europe, where they populated gardens all over the land.  On his official feast day, August 30, the French still celebrate with special floats that ride down flower petal covered streets, while the Irish sing special hymns to him - although the custom isn't nearly as well known as it was before the French Revolution.  For some reason, around that time, he seemed to fall out of favor - and statues of St. Francis of Assisi began to appear in gardens in his place.

In fact, throughout time, St. Fiacre has been so popular that florists, potters (who made garden pots) and other garden-related trades also tried to claim him as their patron.  Even taxi drivers hail him as their patron saint.  Officially, though, he remains the patron saint for gardeners, as those inflicted with the figs of St. Fiacre, and the others had to find patron saints of their own - especially the taxi cab drivers, who never really had a claim to him in the first place.

You may have heard French taxis referred to as "fiacres". This happened not because of the saint, but because of a hotel that bore his name. The hotel was also something of a giant taxi stand where travelers could find transportation.  And so when they went to get a cab they would say they were going "au Fiacre" - a shorthand which meant they were going "to the hotel St. Fiacre." The term eventually came to stand for the vehicle itself rather than either hotel or saint.  And that is how French cabs came to be named after a saint who in reality had little to do with travel and much to do with planting in the earth to grow, to be harvested and to heal.