It’s a strange thing that we adults, who hold all the cards really where children’s fiction is concerned, spotting authors, paying illustrators, devising budgets for the marketing of all these books, are so reticent to step forward and enjoy them. What probably saved it from obscurity was a sudden adult interest in the studying of children’s fiction at the time and that marketing of it as a book for adults. In its time, The Secret Garden was a bit of a damp squib among Frances Hodgson Burnett’s far more successful novels, such as A Little Princess and Little Lord Fauntleroy. It wasn’t until 1911 that it was published in its entirety as a book, and then it was marketed to both adults and children simultaneously, in much the same way as the Harry Potter books or Philip Pullman’s Lyra trilogy were decades later. The story was first published, serialised, in an adult magazine. The Secret Garden is considered a classic British children’s book, but the interesting thing about it is that it was written neither as a book, nor for children. And inside cold, self-centred Mary Lennox is all sorts of good just waiting to be nurtured into growth. Inside the brick walls of abandoned garden are bulbs waiting to shoot and then bloom. The garden, abandoned for a decade, (note that orphan, Mary, unwanted and then left by her own parents, is also ten years old) is an allegory for Mary’s spiritual self. The high walls which shut it in were covered with the leafless stems of climbing roses which were so thick that they were matted together.” But the sweetest thing about it for Mary Lennox is the chance to learn to tame the garden and to grow within its walls. “It was the sweetest, most mysterious-looking place any one could imagine. One of our favourite fictional walled gardens would have to be in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden. It’s little wonder many a novel and film features a walled garden, symbolic of the fertile ground hidden inside the walls of our mind, the wonder of a secret well kept, the idea that behind any ordinary brick wall one might find something fantastical…
Something about their secluded nature makes them just a little bit magical. Wouldn’t we all love a walled garden? Who can honestly say they’ve not wandered through the pretty paths of a walled garden in a stately home, between manicured flower beds and pleached fruit trees and pretended just for a few seconds that they are lady of the manor, taking their crinoline out for an airing on a turn round the estate? Come through the gate with us into a wonderful, walled world
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